Wildfire
by Cerastella
Summary: This is why he captures her attention, the ambitious ferocity lurking the molten swirl of his irises, the edge of animal intelligence and predatory fire churning in their depths. There is danger and cruelty and smooth calculation behind the gold and she is helplessly drawn in, mesmerised by the burn.
1. Chapter 1

**Wildfire**

Chapter 1

 **A/N: So this an idea I've had for awhile, it's sort of random but I thought I'd try it :) Any comments/criticisms are welcome but be warned, it will get pretty dark**

 **Disclaimer: I own nothing recognisable**

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"That one," the grizzled old General grunts to the Madam Azari, his hairbrush moustache twitching as he points at her, "she'll do."

Yusheng peers at him under darkened lashes. He's a war veteran, that much is clear, he stands with the commanding air of a man who expects to be obeyed and the rigidity of a practised soldier. _Not one of those pampered play Generals,_ she thinks as she observes him, there are callouses on his hands, rough and coarse, and his voice lacks serpentine slide of a politician.

It is dark in the harem, a sinful twilight where the orange-fire glow of the lanterns reflects off miles of porcelain skin. The air is thick and perfumed and the cloying-sweet scent of opium hangs in a cloud of heady musk. Around the room the whores of the court lounge on beds of sumptuous red silk cushions, their eyes dazed or calculating as they take in the armoured man.

She rises slowly in a ripple of sinuous motion, her crimson robe slipping slightly open to reveal the slightest hint of rounded creamy flesh. The man pays no notice, his golden eyes sharp and unwavering as he takes her in. He not here for a night with one of the Fire Lord's women, that much she knows just by looking at him, he eyes her not with the salacious leer of lust that she has grown used to, but the impassive gaze of a man surveying livestock: considering but slightly bored.

She glides towards him, her full hips swaying in a seductive saunter, half-lidded eyes meeting his cold ones. The other women watch uninterested, this is a ritual that happens everyday: customer and saleswoman, client and product, man and whore.

"Your name," he asks, his voice brusque.

"Zarin," she purrs, the word tasting like ashes in her mouth, a filthy Fire Nation name given to her to replace her own.

He nods sharply, the air around him smelling of smoke and war, "You are to accompany me tonight to the Fire Lord's birthday celebration. You are to be silent and respectful. The Madam assures me that you are the best for this task."

She inclines her head dutifully in assent, fine black strands of hair drifting in front of her eyes. _This is different,_ she thinks as she looks at him with consideration. He's not _ugly_ per se, old yes, with grey hair and severe lines, but not unattractive. His irises are the fierce gold common amongst the upper classes and his jaw line firm and handsome, it begs the question as to why he has no wife to take to this event. If he were a widower, it would not be questioned for him to be alone, but for him to choose one of the scandalous beauties of the harem, well, it's unusual to say the least.

She has heard, however, in between whispers, of men who prefer men; of soldiers who seek the warmth of their own sex to distract themselves from the fire and blood of war. She wonders looking at this man, if he is one of them, hiding his shameful secret in her beauty from a people who would condemn him.

He turns abruptly and walks off, his soldier's stride setting a hard pace to follow. She trails after him through the dimly lit passages of the palace, taking in the reddish glint of gold that adorns every wall and the lacquer dragons that dance in their frames. It is rare that she leaves the clandestine confines of the harem, when she does it is only for the men that come for her. The fat, privileged courtiers with soft hands and bulging perfumed skin, the vicious men-children who take pride in fucking a woman with no choice. They paw and grab at her flesh, poisoning her with every disgusting, lustful touch, little pig eyes hungry, little claw hands sharp.

They twist and turn through the gloomy corridors, the further they go the more ornate and heavy the decor becomes. She recognises this part of the palace, it's for the honoured guests and personal friends of the Fire Lord, she's only been here once or twice but she'd know it anywhere. The lavish carvings and writhing, flame-like designs were paid for by blood money, gold gained in the smouldering wreck of burnt out villages like volcanic glass pulled from the ashes of an eruption.

They enter a spacious suite of rooms and are greeted by a team of nervous looking serving woman, their worn red uniforms standing out against the scarlet silks and velvets of their surroundings.

He turns to them with an impassive gaze, "Make her presentable," he commands sharply before striding through another door.

They turn to her as one, their dull amber eyes trailing up and down her form assessing. She knows what she looks like, she wears nothing save a crimson silk robe and a scrap of material that barely covers her womanhood. _Whore,_ their minds must whisper at them, _filthy harlot, painted tart, vice and sin._ She can see the very moment it registers, the disgust creeping in behind the wrinkle of their noses and the sneers pulling at their mouths. She smirks back at them salaciously, making a point of roving her gaze up and down their bodies as if she were undressing them in her mind. These women know nothing, they clean and primp and tidy before going home to their happy families and safe lives, their good fortune built on the corpses of her people.

They move toward her cautiously, silent and taking care not to speak. The younger ones eye her nervously, as if they're afraid she'll eat them up while the elders are hesitant in touching her skin.

They dress and undress her quickly and efficiently, taking her robe and removing the cheap combs and pins that hold her hair in a mimicry of court style. They layer her in ornately decorated folds of cloth and pile her hair high with jewels. Her face is painted like a dolls', all snow white skin and tastefully rouged lips while tiny silk slippers are slipped onto her feet.

When they're finished, they step away to allow her to view herself in the mirror, upon catching sight of her reflection she cannot help but gasp. She is wearing more clothes than she has in years, hand stitched layers of lavish silk that ripple down her body like flames. Her hair is expertly twisted and braided into intricate designs and each piece is held firmly in place with pins of priceless rubies. She could almost pass for a noblewoman dressed like this.

Almost, but not quite.

Her neckline is too low, gaping open to show the valley of flesh between her breasts and her face too painted. She is a parody of court style, just lavish enough to fit in but not conservative enough to belong. The General, it appears, still wanted a courtesan, a woman with loose morals and a seductive smile, just one that wouldn't embarrass him. She smirks slyly at the mirror, she can work with that, she can be exotic and forbidden, straddling the line between scandalous and acceptable, she's been wearing that mask for years after all.

It is then the General returns, his presence fills the room with phantom clanking of tanks and screams of the dying as his golden eyes meet hers. Her green orbs are cold in the firelight: hard and unrelenting as marble, sharp and textured as agate. They mark her out more than anything as Earth Kingdom, as Earth Kingdom nobility.

 _Jade,_ her mother had told her, _the stone of kings (Dead,_ the men that come to her whisper, _dead like half your nation)._

He gives her a quick once over before dismissively pronouncing, "Satisfactory," and offering her his arm. She slinks toward him in a ripple of shimmering fabric, draping herself over his armoured bicep and peering coyly up at him through her lashes. He gives her performance no notice and she scowls internally at his lack of reaction, all her acting will go to waste if he doesn't play his part.

As they turn to leave the serving women bow their heads in deference, their postures submissive and docile. She sneers cruelly at them as they pass, _Must be painful,_ she thinks, _to bow for a_ _whore._

They make their way through the halls of the palace quietly, weaving through dark labyrinthine passages and red hued rooms. The General slows his pace so that she can cling to him comfortably but fixes his gaze firmly ahead and says not a word. She's never been one for superfluous noise, but between the echo of their footsteps and the rhythmic hush of their breathing she's feels as though she's drowning in the silence.

The corridors grow grander now as they reach the public areas of the palace, the carvings more opulent and the gold more impressive. It's oppressive in its extravagance. The crimson walls bow under the weight of their own grandeur and the frozen eyes of bejewelled dragons and dead men peer from every surface.

The people drift around like fire lily petals, robed in silks of scarlet and midnight with their headpieces glinting in the lantern light. She stands out in her attire, and she can feel the scornful eyes of the Fire Nation elite crawl over her body, taking in her exposed flesh and rouged lips with hawk eyed gazes. Their stares feel like naked flames running over skin. The women look at her with upturned noses and whisper words of scandal and hate behind their satin fans while the men trail predatory, appreciative leers along her curves.

She takes a sick sort of pride in their stares.

Her face stretches into a sly smile and she makes sure to meet the eyes of everyone she passes. The colour of her irises tell all who look that she is Earth Kingdom, and there is a kind of power in that. As a prisoner of war, for her to be here she must be either uniquely beautiful or uncommonly powerful; she knows, with a pang of twisted vanity, that she is both.

 _Beauty is a woman's armour,_ she remembers her aunts whispering, and she thinks, with a beguiling smile, that she has learnt to wear hers well.

As she and the General step through an imperious crimson doorway she takes a deep breath from where languishes over his arm. She knows how to work a court, how to weave intricate nets of pretty words and empty promises, but she is sorely out of practice. It seems almost a lifetime since she sat with her mother and aunts in the parlour and learnt the secrets of powerful women. She knows, deep down, that she can run rings around these people. Their fiery personalities and heated impatience mean that the movements of politics are quick and brash with little long term planning. Unlike the Earth Kingdom, where deception and treachery sink into every stone of Ba Sing Se and some of the best power plays are decades in the making.

They enter a huge ballroom in the centre of the palace, the walls are the colour of fresh blood and pillars of obsidian support bright gold dragons that spiral down from the ceiling. The sides are draped with tapestries of sun gods and bloodshed, full of scenes of flickering bonfires and rapturous peasants that bow to Agni, the two headed fire god. It is decadent and overbearing and she longs for the clean elegance and calming tones of the Earth Kingdom.

There are more people here and the stares grows more intense. She pouts and sways her hips with every step but her eyes are vivid and calculating. The General (who she now knows is called Khan) must be fairly influential as despite (or perhaps because of) her presence he is approached time and again. There are stiff looking army men with their harsh faces and ragged scars, waifish matrons with pinched features and shrill voices and gluttonous politicians with flowery words and pudgy, jewelled fingers. She studies each person intently, measuring their importance in the way they stand and the gleam in their eyes, reading between the lines and analysing the nuances that only she can see.

She was told to be silent and so she is, she watches and she listens and through that, she learns. She can feel the delicate filigree of it come together in her mind as she pulls together the Fire Nation social scene, gossamer threads of alliances and nets crafted of secret enmity spread out in front of her in complex silken webs.

Most of the night continues in this manner, she is a silent beacon for the jealous ire of women and the covetous gazes of men. She entrances with her eyes, bewitches with the secret seductiveness in her smile and her walk is cultivated to entice. The General, however, barely gives her a second glance. His standoffishness is preferable by far to the cocksure arrogance of the young fools who see her as no more than a pair of breasts and a pretty face, but she feels the stirrings of feminine anger at being so easily dismissed.

The night is drawing to a close when the Fire Lord and his sons head towards them. The monotony and endless drivel of meaningless conversation has taken its toll on her and she thinks longingly of her small bunk back in the harem, she has no desire to be eyed like a toy any longer.

However upon catching sight of Fire Lord Azulon in all his robed glory making his way toward them she shunts her weariness to the side and engages all her mental faculties on the coming conversation.

Fire Lord Azulon walks with a proud arrogance: straight-backed, stiff and commanding. His face is angular and handsome, the lines sharp and cruel. There is a stark harshness to his features, a paradoxical mix of pampered nobleman and weathered warlord and his gold eyes burn with a singular viciousness that is both terrifying and alien. _Dragon eyes,_ she thinks, remembering the old legends about the Fire Lords, _the_ _eyes of the beast._

She knows, looking at him, that this is a man who would happily let the world burn, and not out of madness, but indifference.

 _Lightning,_ she surmises observing him discretely, _the cold fire._

The Crown Prince, Iroh, is his complete opposite. He is short where his father is tall, smiling while his father's face is closed off, his form is more like an earth bender's: compact, powerful muscles meant for standing firm rather than lithe, precise grace crafted for speed and accuracy. His features are rounded, softer and while his eyes are the same terrible gold, there is a jovial spark within them, a good humour amidst the fire.

But, for all the amicability in his poise and way, there is still the inherent sense of danger that runs molten underneath. Prince Iroh is a man not to provoke, a man who hides a fierce and deadly intelligence under his smiles, a man who is already a successful battle commander; carving his own trail of blood and fire across her homeland.

 _Bonfire,_ she decides with a considering glance, _warm and comforting but deadly when mishandled or provoked, the slow burn._

However, it is the second prince that catches her attention.

He stands slightly back from his father and brother, and appears somewhat swamped by the ornate heaviness of his crimson robes. He is only sixteen, still a baby, still a child. But there is something about him that ensnares her focus.

He looks like his father, the same height, the same piercing features and the same elegant grace. However it's clear just by watching that he's used to being ignored, being looked over in favour of his charismatic older brother. His tall form is hunched in ever so slightly and his eyes are just the tiniest bit downcast, he is lesser in the eyes of those around him and he knows it.

She searches around her mind for his name, the second prince is rarely talked about among the whores, innocent as he is, and has not been mentioned at all this evening. Ozai, her mind supplies after some mental digging and she watches him all the more intently to try and figure what it is about him that captivates her so.

She studies him through her lashes, under half-lidded eyes as General Khan and the Fire Lord discuss the war. She is in a prime position to hear it all, no one pays attention to a courtesan, and so she able to form a fairly comprehensive picture of troop movements across the western Earth Kingdom. _Not that it will help anyone,_ she thinks sardonically. The conversation flows by as she continues to watch Prince Ozai, she still cannot tell why she instinctively finds him so intriguing, if anything he looks no different to the other young noblemen that crowd the hall.

But then he looks up and his eyes meet hers.

 _Wildfire,_ she thinks immediately as she looks into the vivid gold of his eyes, _p_ _assion and power, fierce and untamed._

 _This_ is why he captures her attention, the ambitious ferocity lurking the molten swirl of his irises, the edge animal intelligence and predatory fire churning in their depths. There is danger and cruelty and smooth calculation behind the gold and she is helplessly drawn in, mesmerised by the burn. She sees herself reflected back at her, a younger, less jaded version with all the power in the world so close yet so far, slipping through his fingers like ash.

 _Him,_ she thinks looking at him, _him._

He is young, oh so very young, but there is potential there, potential for greatness. She can see where his rough edges need to be refined, where his manner needs to be changed, but underneath there is a drive and a will and she can work with that. She can iron out his creases and mould him between her fingers, sculpt the timbre of his voice so that no one will ignore it and give him a presence that cannot be overlooked. His father is old and dead inside, lacking passion and care and his brother is too complacent, too content with his place in the world. But Ozai, Ozai she can tell from studying has needed to _fight_ to be seen and that gives him an edge in this game, and with her help she knows he can win.

She gives him her most bewitching smile, one part seductive, two parts secret and uses her beauty like a knife. His eyes grow wide watching her, obviously not used to the attention, and his pupils dilate with lust. _Success,_ she crows inside, for all that he is a prince he is still a teenage boy and she can use her body in this dance.

Even when he and his father and brother walk away she can feel his eyes on her for the rest of the night, the molten heat scouring her skin and burning through the layers of her dress. She catches his eyes several times and loads her own her sinful intent, taking advantage of his lack of familiarity with attention to ensnare him with her smile. Inside she feels giddy delight build up inside and fights down the bubbles of laughter that threaten to break her facade. She finally her a purpose, a goal, a _power._ A chance to exercise her formidable mind to its fullest potential, to grasp some the future that she lost when they took her name and her family. _Vengeance_ will be sweet, her revenge on the world for its mistakes and treachery. They thought they could forget her, shove her in a harem and change her name and forget the power that she holds, the power of her forebears.

But no.

With this boy-prince she will shape the future, use the simmering hate and madness in his gaze to craft the world. She will tame the wildfire or release it to blaze unchecked but at the end of the day the cogs of the world will turn by her hand and no one will ever know.

 _Yes,_ she thinks with relish, _let's play._


	2. Chapter 2

**Wildfire**

Chapter 2

 **A/N: So this turned out much, much longer than expected and a lot darker too. Most chapters will probably not be this long or this uh...graphic? I think graphic -though I have seen worse. I just feel as though with ATLA being a children's series it kinda glosses over the fact that the whole world is at war and has been for a long time so I tried to show the sort of horror that comes with that. If you have any questions please ask:)**

 **Warning: Contains graphic(?) descriptions of violence and rape, if this is not for you or makes you uncomfortable then please don't read.**

 **Disclaimer: ATLA is not mine**

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 _It happens at night._

 _The winter air is crisp and cold and the moon shines like an eye in the cloudless sky. The stars are tiny pinpricks of magic that twinkle merrily in the night and the slightest of breezes stirs and dances through the naked tree branches._

 _There is a thoughtful quietness that hangs in the air, a companionable stillness that echoes off the dainty covering of powder snow that decorates the ground and the soft crème stone. The ivy pagoda rooftops of the Liu family compound are frosted with patches of white and the outer walls are lit by the glow of several dozen red lanterns. The grounds are mostly silent, with only a few wandering guards that patrol the perimeter and just the faintest suggestion of laughter that rings joyous through the walls._

 _The day has long since faded and the chill in the air means that all who can have retreated indoors to escape the cold. However instead of seeking the quiet company of their families, the night is alive with merrymaking and drunken fooleries._

 _The night is New Year's Eve, a night for family and celebrations; for welcoming in the new year with joyous smiles and prayers for the men on the front. A night for carousing and revelry, for forgetting the nigh endless stream of blood that runs along the western coast and for celebrating a life lived in the moment. Every home and hostel from Ba Sing Se to Omashu is awake tonight, red lanterns hung up outside homes to ward off evil spirits and fiery baijiu running like water. It is the only night of the year where red is a symbol of good fortune and goodwill rather than the armies of the devil, where it means food and warmth rather than the scent of burning flesh._

 _The Liu family compound is no different, tucked to the south west in the heart of the forested province of Xinzang, the walls both outside and in are decorated with warm scarlet and beautifully sculpted gold calligraphy containing messages for the new year. Lanterns and candles are lit all throughout the mansion and the soft, friendly glow reflects warmly off of the pale green and gold walls._

 _Yusheng sits in the parlour with the rest of her family, a polished collection of some of the most prestigious people in the Earth Kingdom. A refined group of some of the most influential individuals on the continent: ambassadors and court officials, civil servants and advisors, women of the court and their children. Each has travelled from whatever distant place they hail from to be home for the most sacred night of the year._

 _The atmosphere is festive and playful, the air hums with the pleasant sound of chatter and the muted lantern light is companionable and homely. In one corner the family elders snicker into their voluminous silken sleeves as her grandfather sputters indignantly over a lost pai sho game and her Uncle Honghui strums idly on an old pipa. In the centre of the room her parents sway together clumsily in a parody of a Ba Sing Se waltz and her younger cousins run riot through the halls, ruffling their ornate jade robes and spreading bright giggles of joy through the mansion._

 _Yusheng herself sits amongst a circle of her aunts; austere, beautiful creatures with clever green eyes and luminous pale skin. They sit lazily on fine cushions of emerald silk, decked head to toe in layers of embroidered fabric in a spectrum of green and gold. Their luscious ebony locks are piled high on their heads, adorned with combs and pins of jade and sapphire and their faces are subtly contoured to throw their pristine features into focus._

 _Their voices are low and alluring when they speak or full of a carefully cultivated sweetness, designed to entice and entrap. These women are the backbone of Liu political power, the heart of an information network that spans from the northern reaches where grass becomes snow to the sweltering sands of the desert and the treacherous heart of Ba Sing Se._

 _Her aunts are political creatures, sly and secretive with sharp eyes and even sharper minds. They manage and maintain the trails of gossip and whispers integral to the family and their subtle manipulations shape the web of power within the heart of the inner city of Ba Sing Se._

 _But they are teachers as much as they are spymasters and schemers._

 _From the moment that she was first aware of her family's auspicious history her mother and aunts have groomed her to play the game of power. To ensnare the hearts and minds of all those she comes across with a razor edged ruthlessness and a stone heart. She is the eldest daughter of her generation and weight of a thousand generations of Lius sits on her slender shoulders._

 _So as much as New Years is a time from relaxing and enjoyment, it's also a time for Yusheng to continue her education._

 _She listens carefully to her aunts as they discuss the latest political happenings of the Earth Kingdom, the most recent events of their world. She learns that the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation is to be married and the Prince of Omashu was killed by Fire Nation raiders not two leagues from the city; that Lady Wu of Niao City has taken her brother for a lover and the tribes of the desert gather for war._

 _But she also learns more abstract, important things. Lessons taught to her years ago that are reaffirmed and wrapped more tightly around her heart. She learns that a whisper in the right ear is a hundred times more powerful than a legion of earthbenders and a sigh of pleasure more deadly than any sword. She is reminded by her glorious, graceful aunts that beauty is deeper cutting than any knife and that courtesy is an attack as well as a defence; that her body is a temple and one day all men will worship at its doors,_ 'But never let them any further,' _her aunts grin slyly from behind gossamer fans,_ 'make them love you with words and smiles but never flesh.'

 _They are important lessons, knowledge that will help her run the information empire constructed by generations upon generations of Liu women. But they also serve a deeper purpose for her, there have been mutterings, she knows, of the young Earth King. How he will need wife to bear him heirs one day and a family to guide and raise him in the place of his own. The baby, for that is what he is, is much younger than her and the only member of his family left alive, save for countless bastards born of court concubines. He has no father to teach him to rule, no mother to instruct him to be kind and no siblings for him to treasure. He has been left in the hands of his dead father's advisors, her father and his twin brother being two of them, but the majority are backstabbing traitorous wretches hungry for the power he possesses by right of blood, the power her family commands through cleverness and cunning._

 _The Lius are the most powerful family in the Earth Kingdom. As a collective they have held political dominance in all the various courts and holds on the continent for millennia._ 'Kingmakers,' _whisper the common people in shaded streets,_ 'the power behind the throne,' _scheme the nobles in the shadowy alcoves of pleasure gardens._

 _It is the subtle yet unmistakable influence of the Liu family that has prevented the Fire Nation from claiming the entirety of the Earth Kingdom in the seventy years that they have been trying. The strength and power of their reach and the knowledge carried by their spy-rings that keeps the red army at bay. It is through Liu manipulation and guile that the Earth Kingdom became and remains a unified state rather than fractured warring nations._

 _As a consequence, her family have acquired an almost mythical status in the hearts and minds of the regular people, a reverence and respect that was only hinted at before, and it is for these reasons that her family are pushing for a betrothal between herself and the infant king._

 _She would hardly be the first: her family have a long history of supplying queens and consorts for the crown and for marrying the second sons and daughters of the royal seat into the family; her own grandmother was a princess after all. But for Yusheng this makes her aunt's lessons all the more important. As queen she would be the most important woman in the Earth Kingdom, responsible for the maintaining of an entire court of scheming nobles and forever dodging knives in the shadows. It would secure her family's position at court for generations to come; her children would be princes and kings, her cousins' advisors and warlords and her blood would enter the dynasty forever._

 _So she watches and takes in._

 _She learns to charm with a smile and seduce with a word, to pull to together the thin threads of alliances that bind the court with just body language. She familiarises herself with the vast network of agents her family command both here and overseas and learns to analyse a continents worth of gossip effortlessly._

(She learns that men are dogs and women are shrews: easily tamed and turned on each other, entertaining but worthless.)

 _As her aunts continue to weave together their plans for the coming year, a distant cousin has managed to procure an ancient looking erhu from one of the other rooms. The instrument is of fine ochre zi tan, worn looking and cracked, but a few cautious plucks of the strings reveal that the sound is still as good as ever. Her cousin and Uncle Honghui exchange conspiratorial glances out of the corner of their eyes and, with much flourish and ceremony, lean over their respective instruments and begin to play._

 _At the first few notes the members of her family drifting through idle conversation and merry laughter noticeably perk up. The tune is fast paced and joyful, familiar to all ears, a traditional folk tune of their province and specifically for New Year. The melody grows louder and more confident and before long someone else has found a xiao and the whole room is filled with the sound of music._

 _Yusheng feels the corners of her mouth tilt upwards in a delighted smile as she unconsciously hums along. Her aunts pause in their conversation to listen and their sharp green eyes soften with fondness, relaxing truly for the first time that night. She looks over to see that her parents have abandoned their clumsy waltz in favour of a complicated couples dance involving twists and leaps, and she watches her mother's eyes light with happiness as her father twirls her in graceful arcs, silk skirts flying with the movement._

 _They are not the only ones: around the room husbands offer their hands to wives, fathers to daughters and brothers to sisters as the whole room comes together to join the revelry. The elders too old to dance sway in their seats, eyes glazed with reminiscence and Yusheng stifles her laughter as she sees some of her much younger cousins attempt to join in._

 _As the music picks up further the pattern of notes becomes more complex and her only older cousin, Junjie, detaches himself from the crowd of twirling merrymakers and comes to stand in front of her._

 _Junjie, at five-and-ten, is three years older than her and already cuts a handsome figure; his cheekbones are high and noble and his emerald eyes liquid and intelligent. He looks like his father and hers, dressed entirely in deep green court robes with his fall of inky hair secured high in a bun. He bows to her, extending one elegant, long-fingered hand and peers into her eyes, "My lady," he begins, eyes glinting mischievously, "would you do me the honour of this dance?"_

 _Yusheng can't help the embarrassed blush that blooms across her face, her cousin really is so very handsome, his voice is low and smooth (and if this were a different time, a better one, it would be him she would marry, not a babe ten years her junior)._

 _Around her her aunts titter and murmur with appreciation, their eyes travelling over the pair of them, assessing. Aunt Ruyi throws her head back and huffs a laugh, her golden head pieces clinking with the movement, "Well aren't you charming, Nephew-dearest?" she purrs with a grin, "I bet those poor, clueless chits in Ba Sing Se just lap you up!"_

 _Junjie straightens and turns to her with a grin, "I don't know what you're talking about, Auntie," he says blithely, the light in his eyes giving him away, "I am the perfect gentlemen."_

" _I bet you are," Aunt Lanfen snorts into her baijiu before knocking the whole lot back with the ease of a practised professional, "I bet you've got half the frustrated spinsters at court eating out of your hands," she adds wryly._

 _Junjie smirks at her, agate eyes sharp and bright, "And would it be such a problem if I did?" he questions slyly._

" _Nüwa no!" she scoffs, "The Spirits know those women are difficult enough already, can you imagine what they'd be like without a pretty face to distract them?" she says rolling her eyes._

 _Aunt Xiaoli shifts in her seat with a tired sigh and lazily rubs her rounded belly, her unusual bicoloured eyes slide to Aunt Lanfen and she raises her brows, "You wouldn't be saying that if it was_ your _son those shrivelled prunes eyed up like a piece of meat," she comments drily and sighs, leaning back, "It takes everything in me not leap over and claw their disgusting beady eyes out," she says, lips curling with distain._

" _Why, Mother, I didn't know you cared," Junjie answers with a grin._

 _Aunt Xiaoli snorts inelegantly and closes her eyes, "Of course I do, Junjie, I spend half my life worrying about you and your siblings. All the stress you put me through is hardly good for the baby," she finishes, rubbing her stomach affectionately._

" _That reminds me," Aunt Mei leans forward, strands of ebony hair swaying in front of her eyes "Did my idiot brother make you stop off at that stupid temple near Chameleon Bay on your way here," she says, her words slightly slurred and the baijiu cup in her right hand swaying precariously._

 _Aunt Xiaoli opens a single viridian eye and groans, "Don't remind me. I had to sit there for two hours_ two hours! _While an old man sprinkled 'sacred earth' on me and chanted in a dead language because my oaf of a husband feared 'bad spirits,'" she complains._

 _Aunt Ruyi laughs, a bright bell-like sound, "That sounds like Meng-yao," she chuckles, "Between him and Jing-guo, Mother always said that he was the most prone to hysterical flights of fancy," she says, plump lips curved in a wide smile._

" _Yes, well, I told him, "Husband!" I said, "Three children I have borne from this body and not one has become infected by 'bad spirits,'"" Aunt Xiaoli proclaims, opening both eyes and pointing her finger for emphasis, "But no, if I don't undergo a cleansing ritual the 'evil energies' will get our child and who knows what will happen," she sighs long-sufferingly, "Nüwa knows how he manages to advise a king."_

 _Junjie chuckles and glances at his mother, amusement shining in his eyes, "It was quite ridiculous, wasn't it?" He turns to face the circle of women with a small smile, "Anyway, before you ladies interrupted me I was asking the most beautiful woman in the room to dance," he says before turning back to Yusheng and once more extending his hand, "What do you say, Little Yu? Want to show these old hags how it's done?" he asks with a quirk of a brow._

 _Her aunts gasp in mock outrage fluttering their silk fans with laughter in their eyes, intricate dresses shining in the lantern light. Yusheng makes a big show of studying his hand and deliberating over it before meeting his eyes with a beaming smile, "If I must, Cousin," she grins, placing her hand in his._

 _Junjie gently pulls her to stand and tucks her hand under his arm to lead her to the centre of the room. As they turn the song ends and the room bursts into applause, the dancing couples finish face to face and palm to palm with laughter on their lips and stars in their eyes. She grins at the sight, her family are so serious normally; it fills her with delight to see them so unbound and free, cares of the court and the war forgotten for the night._

 _Her father lifts up her mother and twirls her around, "Encore!" he cries as he pulls her hair free from the restraints holding it in place, letting it spill in a sheet of midnight down her back._

 _The rest of the Lius seem to agree as echoes of "Another!" and "More music!" sound around the room. Uncle Honghui and the other players laugh and smile at each other as they exchange hushed whispers before the three of them resume their positions._

 _Junjie looks over to her and waggles his eyebrows, "Ready?" he questions with a grin._

" _Of course," she replies primly, much to his amusement._

 _Together they take their place in the centre of the room with the other dancers, the first few notes of song thrum through the room as everyone takes their positions. Yusheng raises one hand to meet Junjie's flat above their heads and the other to press twisted with his by their waists. She meets his beaming face with a smile of her own and they're off as soon as the music begins._

 _The dance is a complex one: a dance of near misses and clasped hands that spiral in and out in supposed random motions. Partners are required to separate and come together faster and faster as the music goes on until no space separates them at all._

 _Yusheng exchanges smirks and laughs with her cousin as they dart and weave in and out of each other, hands finding hands and waists and arms as the dance goes on. They twirl and leap in amongst the other couples as they grab each other's hands and fly. Her skirts and his robes fan out around them in whirls of jade silks and her headpieces jingle and chime as they move as one across the dancefloor._

" _Having fun, Little Yu?" Junjie laughs as they duck around the merry forms of some distant cousins._

" _More than I've had in an age!" she declares happily, swirling away then close again._

" _Good!" he replies smiling, "Wouldn't want to disappoint the queen!" he grins as they separate._

 _Yusheng scowls at that as she slips under the arched arms of another couple, she weaves in and out in increasingly complicated motions through swirls of silk before meeting Junjie again, "I'm not the queen, Junjie" she says griping his manicured hands just a touch too tight._

 _He simply smirks at her before leaning in close with the dance and whispering, "Not_ yet _," before whipping away in a swirl of silk._

 _Her forehead creases in aggravation and her lips purse in a frustrated pout as she follows him through the dipping, darting throng of bodies. The air around her vibrates with sound as the music climbs towards a chaotic crescendo and the wide smiles on the faces of her family are tinted with mad glee as they hurtle, laughing, towards the climax._

 _She catches him again close to the centre, his handsome face split in a wild grin as he notices her ducking towards him. The intensity of his green eyes on hers makes her skin flush and warmth spreads through her veins as they twist together again, bodies siding around each other in ripples of motion. The exhilaration and happiness lighting his eyes makes it hard for her to stay annoyed with him but he catches the slight crinkling of her brow and asks, "Why so frustrated, Yu? To be queen is a highly coveted position," he says cocking his head mid spin._

 _She grimaces, "The king is not even old enough to enunciate properly, how am I supposed to look forward to a marriage with a boy a decade my junior?" she scowls irritably._

 _Junjie smirks and spins her around, "Ah, but cousin-darling, you forget," he begins, eyes sparkling deviously, "with the king being so very young and you being that much older, you'll be the biggest influence in his life," he says silkily, "he, and by extension the rest of the Earth Kingdom, will be yours to shape and control, Liu power reigning supreme," he finishes as they turn in tandem, "and," he says moving to stand behind her, "I'll always be around court to satisfy in ways your juvenile husband…can't" he purrs, leaning forward so his lips brush her ear, the feel of his warm breath on the sensitive skin there sending shivers down her spine._

 _She can feel her heart hammering in her chest and the delicious slide of heat under her skin as her brain briefly loses the ability to think. She quickly jolts herself out of her stupor to grasp his hands and twirl to face him with a scowl, "I'm twelve, Cousin, and not interested in your charms," she tells him firmly._

 _Junjie merely smiles slowly and dips his head in apology, "Maybe in a few more years then, Cousin."_

 _She snorts and rolls her eyes in a most unladylike fashion to reply and they are sucked back into the fray._

 _The music is wild now and the dancing messy and free. The nobility of the Liu family stamp and clap to the beat as they whirl with increasing speed. Thin beads of sweat slide down the faces of Uncle Honghui and his companions as they play faster and faster to reach the peak of the song. The rhythm accelerating off towards disorder as the dancers jump and spin around each other._

 _Yusheng keeps her eyes on Junjie's as they dance, their delighted laughter twining together as he lifts her in the air, his crystalline irises shining in the lantern glow. They dip and twirl in frantic yet graceful movements faster and faster, closer and closer, the air heavy with joy and heady with life._

 _Until it isn't._

 _It only takes a split second, only a single instant, but in a moment the air is taken from her lungs and the world seems to slow down around her, time stretching into a torturous crawl. She watches, as if she is an observer, as Junjie's eyes widen in utter shock before he flings himself over her, covering her body with his._

 _Time speeds up all at once._

 _A massive rush of heat and a typhoon of scorching air wash over her in an explosion of fiery wind; the world roars with fury as a wall of pressure rockets into her body and steals what little breath she has. For a split second that feels like a lifetime there is nothing but the intense heat and the ringing in her ears. The universe narrows down to the suffocating dryness of the air and the watering of her eyes as the firestorm rages around her. Junjie's eyes above her are sealed shut in pain as he cocoons her on the wooden floor, the heated winds buffeting his back._

 _It's over in an instant._

 _And then the screaming starts._

 _Totured screeches of pure agony break the silence in an awful cacophony of noise -sounds Yusheng will remember for the rest of her life. The screams are terrifying but the angonised keening is worse, muted moans of torment that join the wails around them in a symphony of suffering._

 _Junjie rolls off of her and onto his back with a thump, letting out a breathless gasp of pain and Yusheng blinks her dry eyes to get a look at what has happened._

 _The world is on fire._

 _The beautiful, green tiled roof has almost been completed ripped off with the force of whatever happened and the innards of the ceiling are aflame and cracking. The green walls and lacquer furnishings crumble with flickering fire and priceless porcelain lies smashed and burning on the ground. The walls closest to the centre of the house have been totally blown out, leaving a gaping maw with splinters of wooden beams for teeth; through it she can see that the rest of the house has also been reduced to a flaming shell._

 _She struggles to pull herself upright, wincing at the aching, tight feeling in her muscles. The overpowering smell of smoke, ash and flame hits her nostrils, coupled with a sickening, cloying scent that must be cooking flesh. She tries to take a breath but the noxious fumes in the air force her to her hands and knees, spluttering great hacking coughs that make her feel as though her lungs are trying to crawl out through her throat._

 _The whole situation feels unreal, like something from a nightmare; the room feels like a furnace and the air tastes like hell and she forces herself to her feet as sweat begins to run down her neck. She peers through the ghastly hellfire glow cast by the flames and promptly leans over and vomits._

 _Dotted around the room are the screaming, moaning bodies of her family. Her grandfather lies face down on the ground, a charred corpse, his robe burnt straight off his body along the top layers of skin and his hair is still on fire. Aunt Xiaoli is collapsed on her back shrieking, furiously pulling burning material off her body with smoking hands, her pregnant stomach red raw from the explosion. Her little cousin Hualing lies to her right crying soft, pained-filled tears with her beautiful glowfly robes burnt onto her skin._

No _, her mind stutters in disbelief,_ no. _She pauses again as another coughing fit works its way up her oesophagus, bending her over double as she stuffs her silk sleeve into her mouth and resists the urge to cry. The wails of her family echo around her as she stumbles through the fiery gloom to find her parents._

 _She makes it two steps before she collapses to her knees in anguish. There, trapped under a burning pillar, are the dead bodies of her parents. Her mother's skin is hanging of her face in charred, blackened flaps and her father's is the colour of burnt meat; they are wrapped in each other's embrace with the ghosts of their last screams locked on their faces._

 _She chokes back an awful keening wail as bile rises to her throat again and darts her eyes around madly, looking for some sign that someone else is alright, but finds none._

 _Junjie, it seems, has saved her life. Shielded her from the heat and force that ripped through their home with his own body._

 _The roar of the fire is loud in her ears as she turns back to him. His handsome face is still pristine in the firelight as he moans quietly in pain, but looking closer all the hair on the back of his head has been burnt right off and all the muscles in his body are tense with agony._

 _The horror of it all spreads through Yusheng's mind in crystal clarity, imprinting the entire scene forever in her consciousness. She doesn't notice as tears begin to run down her sweaty, soot covered face and cares less for sharp sting of pain in her fingers as she bites down hard on her silk covered fist._

 _She crawls over to Junjie and trails trembling dirty fingers down his tormented face. Her mind is a riot of disjointed thoughts and half-formed cries of disbelief: it doesn't feel real, shouldn't_ be _real. But as her Uncle Longwei continues to shriek in agony in the background she cannot deny that it is._

 _The fire blazes around her but she cannot bring herself to move, cannot force herself to abandon her family as they lie dead and dying. She is paralyzed by horror; her dress is covered in soot with her hair hanging in strands around her stricken face. Her eyes are blown wide, pupils dilated, as her mind works at high speed to digest the situation; a terrible, sickening calm settling over her mental landscape._ Shock _, she numbly registers as she stares unseeing at Junjie's tense face. Despite the unbearable heat she feels cold all over, ice starting to weave its way through her veins, crystallising her blood and darkening the edges of her vision._

 _But before she allows herself to succumb she hears something behind her. A metallic clanking-whirring sound, quiet and barely there over the screams and the fire. The sound is so out of place in this situation that her brain automatically registers it and she unconsciously zeroes in on it to listen._

Clack, clack, clack, clack, clack.

 _She struggles in her dazed state to recognise it, although something about it triggers an overwhelming sense of terror deep inside._

 _There is a sudden fluttering pressure on her wrist and her head swings in a jerky motion to look down at it. Staring down, she sees a red, blistered hand trying to wind itself around hers and tracing it back she sees Junjie looking up at her with pain-dazed eyes._

"… _Yu?" he breathes softly, hissing in pain._

 _She abruptly scrambles closer to him so she is leaning over his prostrate form, "Junjie?" she replies in a hoarse, cracking voice._

 _He gasps in an agonised breath and smiles at her faintly, "You're okay," he sighs slightly in relief._

 _She nods tremulously in return, tears streaming down her face as she reaches to cup his damaged hand in her raw ones._

 _He closes his eyes and his breath hitches slightly, teeth clenching in pain, "Good," he says, fingers briefly digging into hers. He moans as his eyelids flutter open again and he struggles to turn his head to face her. As he attempts to roll his head over, his dazed eyes catch onto something behind her and his whole body seizes up. His eyes widen in shock as they swivel, still glazed with pain, back to hers and she flinches slightly as his burnt hand abruptly squeezes her tender skin._

" _Yu!" he hisses urgently through gritted teeth, "You need to go!" he says with terror filled eyes._

 _She looks down at him with a teary gaze, "Go?" she says absently with a frown._

 _His eyes drift past her over to where the gaping wound in the wall lies and gasps out two words that sound like a death knell, "Fire Nation."_

 _Fire Nation_

Fire Nation

FIRE NATION

 _Yusheng whips her head around to stare behind her and there, through the flickering flames and the miasma of smoke, is a demon._

 _The figure is tall and plated in armour the colour of burnt skin and dried blood, cast in shadows by the unholy light of the blaze. An amalgamation of sharp edges and thick spikes, he stands wreathed by the fire like some sort of terrible yaoguai, crowned by the wicked points of his helm._

 _The image is so different from Earth Kingdom soldiers who, in their greens and browns and heavy curved plates look like the earth incarnate: stone and hard and unyielding, not this awful monstrosity of ash and ember._

 _But the most horrifying part is his face mask. Bone white and hideous, an image of the human skull inlaid over his face, hiding his identity and distancing him from the horror of his actions. The design of it speaks of savagery: of ancient tribal customs and wearing the bones of your enemies in their defeat._

 _Looking at him she feels the ice in her veins again, but this time it isn't a numbing sensation, dulling the edges of her senses, but sharp, cold and painful -freezing her to the spot with pure terror. The screams and the heat of the flames fade all around her as she stares, pupils dilated in terror, at his haunting visage and her heart begins to race in her chest as her limbs start in tremble._

 _It's the stuff of nightmares, he is the monster in the dark that every Earth Kingdom child learns to fear sooner or later. A physical and metaphorical symbol of countless atrocities and genocide, of an evil man's thirst for more and his son's hunger for power._

Why is he here! _Her mind cries desperately while another part distantly registers the realty that this is the Fire Nation's attack on unified Earth Kingdom power._

 _It takes Junjie's tight grip on her wrist and the feeling of nails on blistered skin that jolts her from her terrifies stupor. She swings her head back around to look at him and finds his jade eyes sharp with fear, his grip tightens slightly on her wrist before slackening and falling back to the ground. He looks directly into her eyes and whispers low and serious, "Yusheng. Run."_

 _That's all it takes._

 _She's up like a flash, dodging and ducking and weaving through flaming pillars and past charred corpses. She scrambles through the ruins of her home, tripping over the blackened edges of her silk gown and distantly registers the sound of furious shouting behind her above the din._ The soldier must have noticed _, her mind notes absently, but the thought only spurs her on faster as she struggles through the burning wreck._

 _She feels like such a terrible daughter, terrible cousin, terrible niece, as she leaves the smouldering remains of her family behind, screaming in their dying throes. But the sight of the Fire Nation soldier invokes such a primal, animalistic fear inside her that all voices apart from_ GETAWAYGETAWAYRUNGETAWAY! _are silenced as her blood thrums in her ears and the burnt skin of her calves' throbs and stretches with each stride._

 _The world fades around her: fires, screams and all, as her mind is consumed by the instinct to flee. The sound of her panting echoes the rhythm of her heart as the shouts behind her grow louder as other soldiers join the chase._ Keepgoingkeepgoingkeepgoingkeepgoing _, sounds in her mind,_ runrunrunrun!

 _She loses her slippers her somewhere along the way but she doesn't notice the pain as_ There! _the exit, a segment of blown out wall comes into focus in front of her. She bursts from the burning mansion into the freezing winter air and doesn't stop. The biting of the chilled winds stings on her seared skin and the snow numbs the blisters on her feet._

 _She tears frantically towards the compound wall, towards the nearest gate and the forest beyond, thinking no thoughts but of escape. The inferno behind her lights up the night in a ghastly hue of bloody orange and furious red as the heat warms her back and the roar splits the silence. Her young legs are short, but adrenaline gives her the edge as she sprints, regardless of the pain, towards the small hole in the wall she and her cousins discovered years earlier. She takes running dive and scrambles through the gap, hoping that it will stop her pursuers._

 _She has no idea where she is running to, no thoughts of what to do once she gets there, but flies thoughtlessly into the forest, stumbling over frozen logs and stones, her dress ripped by wayward branches._

 _The shouts of the men (_ demons, monsters, killers, _her_ _mind_ _whispers) are quieting behind her and the sounds of their heavy steel boots in the snow dying in the night; she allows herself the brief fluttering of hope that she is_ getting away _when her ankles and wrists are suddenly snapped together by an unstoppable force and she goes tumbling into the snow. She hits the ground face first, the momentum of her run propelling her forward and dragging the sensitive skin of her face along the frozen dirt. She rolls over the hard-packed ground, sticks tearing at pained flesh of her legs and tangling in her hair, the solid thumps of stones and roots bruising her skin._

 _She come to a stop on her back, panting heavily with wild eyes and a soot-smudged-tear-stained face. She looks desperately down for the bindings holding her arms and legs together and her heart almost stops in her chest when she sees that they are made of_ earth. _Only earthbenders –highly trained ones- could lock the limbs of someone running so accurately and that is_ brilliant _, she is_ Saved!

 _She sees the glowing lights of torches through the dark trees and relief fills her body,_ That must be them, _she thinks and she considers calling out to them but decides not to as the Fire Nation could still be around. The tension fades from her body as she basks in the hope of aid and resolves to tell the earthbenders of her family's demise (so they can CRUSH BURY and_ POUND _the soldiers, destroy them completely, smash their bones and shatter their skulls)._

 _But the hope evaporates faster than water in a desert as it is not the welcome forms of earthbenders or Earth Kingdom men that step into her line of site, but three petrifying figures of ghoulish men in ash coloured clothes and chilling bone-masks._

 _Her whole form seizes in visceral panic and the uncontrollable shudders in her limbs start again. It is the instinctive fear of prey in a corner with no escape and no way out, the realisation that the armadillo lion has found you and you can't run._

WHEREARETHEEARTHBENDERS?! _her mind shrieks,_ WHERE ARE THEY? I KNOW THEY'RE HERE! WHEREARETHEY! _she screams in her head as the soldiers come closer, cradling flames in their palms._

 _They walk slowly, almost leisurely, towards where she lies horror-struck on the ground._

" _Caught you, you little mud-scum earth-whore," one of them spits, his voice distorted by his mask, "took us on quite the chase," he hisses as he stomps heavily down on her right foot._

 _The sound of her bones shattering echoes through the night and she screams out in agony, her back arching up away from the pain. Little lightning bolts skitter up her leg and she trembles at the aftershocks, wheezing heavily._

 _The men laugh, their warped voices awful in the winter dark. The one who hurt her speaks again, "Hurt did it?" he says sickeningly sweet, "serves you right for surviving, Bitch. You should have died with the rest of your filthy, dirt-crawler family!" he growls before stomping hard on her other leg._

 _She screams once again as the bones crack, the image of Junjie's pain-filled eyes and her parents torched bodies overlaying in the white-out of her mind, mental pain combining with physical in her shrieks._

NUWA IT HURTS! she silently cries as tears stream down her face and her body shakes, _WHERE ARE THE EARTHBENDERS!? she can't help thinking, why are they letting her_ suffer!?

 _The men creep closer until they surround her on all sides, expressionless masks leering down at her helpless form. "She quite pretty," one of them comments idly, "underneath all that soot and dirt."_

" _She's just a child," another scoffs, a distinctly disdainful edge to the tilt of his head._

" _Not quite," the original man hums thoughtfully, he crouches down next to her a runs one gauntleted finger over her left breast and she shudders in revulsion, "look at these tits! She'll be a looker one day!" he laughs filthily and looks at his companions, "You heard what those prisoners said about Liu women!" he turns to look in her terrified eyes, "Spirits given flesh!" he purrs, pinching where her nipple is under the torn and dirtied silk._

 _She flinches and shudders in disgust and horror_ What is he doing!? _He keeps his hand trailing down her body, following the grain of the ruined cloth until he reaches the apex between her thighs. He slowly runs his hand over her mound, chuckling, "You see, maybe she's a child but she's_ all _woman down here," he laughs darkly._

 _Yusheng's mind shorts out,_ Nononononono!Thiscannotbehappening! _her whole body trembles in fear as she stares with petrified eyes at his hand. A dirty feeling begins to slither up her spine, filthy and tainted as his hand continues to wander, her blood turning to muck and scum in her veins. She is too terrified to move, like spider in a jar, powerless._

 _She closes her wild eyes, praying,_ praying _, that this is just a horrific nightmare, that in a moment she will wake up back in her family's home in the Upper Ring of Ba Sing Se. But it doesn't happen, the hand removes itself from her most private place and tears at the ruined fabric covering her body, exposing her flesh to the winter air._

 _Her eyes fly open, and by some instinct she tries desperately to scrabble back from their concealed faces and hungry eyes but the earthen cage still binds her limbs and her feet shriek with pain, making it impossible to get far. She feels frightened, oh so very frightened, and_ dirty _, bare, with her developing breasts uncovered in hellish fire-glow._

 _The man snickers sinisterly and abruptly lunges forward, covering her slight form with his heavy, larger one and wrenches her arms above her head with one hand, the other moving to paw at her chest. The other men hover closer, snickering darkly under their breaths as their companion grabs and pulls at her skin._

 _If she could find her voice, she'd beg him to stop, but she lost it in her flight so all she can do is lie helpless and whimper while her mind cries in horror. He needs to stop!_ He needs to stop! _It's too much and oh, Spirits, she's never felt so_ wrong, _so violated and terrified._

" _Don't be scared, sweetheart," her whispers softly, stroking the side of her face, "It'll all be over soon," he croons, deceptively kind. He reaches down to the belt on his uniform trousers and unfastens it, she can hear the rustling and clinking in unnerving clarity before his forces her legs apart with one knee._

 _She is incoherent with fear and revulsion now, with tears flowing in a steady stream from her wide eyes and limbs wracked by pain laced shivers._ This needs to stop. THIS NEEDS TO STOP! _Everything within her cries out, but the only noises she can make are pathetic little whimpers that sound about as threatening as a baby moose lion and gasping, panting breaths that tear at her lungs. Bile rises hot and acidic in her throat as she_ feels something _blunt and hard and horrible press up inside her thighs and the terrible, tainted feeling increases._

 _She stares unseeing at that horrific skull mask hovering above her and thinks of nothing but the explosion that ripped through her home and the pure disgust at_ herself _that this situation inspires. Oh by the Jade Emperor, she's so so scared and ashamed and_ burning _on the inside when –PAIN! Her legs twitch and she throws her head back and screams, high and terrible into the night_

 _There's Something_ Inside _her, oh by all that's holy, by Nüwa, by the Spirits, Get It Out GET IT OUT_ GET IT OUT! _She feels something tearing and it hurts, by the ancestors it HURTS! It's so big and she feels like it's going to kill her, he'll kill her, she'll die lying here in the snow assaulted by this devil and her last memory will be pain and the toxic feeling in her lungs that feels like drowning. The sick sounds of flesh slapping echo around her along with the jeers of the other men and the bestial grunts of the man above her (_ inside _her) and no, No, he's enjoying this! HE'S ENJOYING THIS! How? How is that possible? It hurts_ so much _and the humiliation makes her wish she would just die and MAKEITSTOP_ MAKEITSTOP!

 _She's sobbing and howling in equal amounts now: shrill, blubbering noises interspersed with garbled pleas and begging. Pleasestoppleasestopleavemealoneithurtsithutstopstopstopplease! She wants them to leave,_ Him _to leave, to curl up in a ball and fade away to the sound of one of her mother's lullabies. Her insides feel like they're being torn apart and he gropes roughly at her chest and grunts and laughs and Spirits, she wants her mother, she wants her mother so bad: to stroke her hair and tell her everything will be alright, to help her into her official court robes and beam proudly and_ you're beautiful, darling, never forget that. _But her mother is dead, along with her father, blackened, charcoal bags of flesh devoid of life and soul. But it hurts SO BAD and SPIRITS, SPIRITS, WHERE IS HER MOTHER!? SHE WANTS HIM OFF HER WHERE IS HER MUMMY!?_

 _(where are the earthbenders that bound her?)_

 _She refuses to look at his mask/face through it and stares up at the trees looming over her like a cage. The night is clear and the moon is bright and the stars watch down eternal but no solace is to be found in them. But as she stares unblinking-unseeing upwards through the pain (and the humiliation and the hurt) she sees something, something that is clearly neither a part of a tree nor a forest animal._

 _And the possibility is too horrific to contemplate._

 _Up in the gnarled and bare branches, crouched in amongst the deep shadows of the winter night is a man, but not just any man. His face is concealed by a wide brim hat and his hair is braided neatly down his back; his robes fall to his ankles in a swathe of heavy fabric and he hides within the dark like it's a familiar friend. The material of his robes is a deep emerald green with golden rims and the cut simple but efficient, but the most recognisable (terrifying) thing is the symbol on his chest: a square within a circle, Earth within the Heavens. Earth Kingdom._

Dai Li _her mind supplies through the agony and the shame._

 _What is a Dai Li agent doing here? So far from Ba Sing Se? Why is he just hiding there as the Earth Kingdom's most prominent family lies screaming and burning not a mile away? (why is he just watching?)._

 _She looks straight at him, straight at where she thinks his eyes would be and_ screams. _He doesn't even flinch, merely stays hidden in the trees, immovable and still as she is violated in the most personal of ways._

 _And suddenly, it comes to her in a blinding flash of absurd understanding._

 _(She remembers in the depths of her mind, a time when she was much younger. A dim, smoky room in her family's quarters of the palace and a finely made xiangzhi table strewn with maps of the Earth Kingdom. Small, intricately carved figures of red dragons suspended mid roar dot the maps facing off against exquisite ivory guardian lions, the mythological beasts that stand guard at the palace gates. She remembers sitting on her father's knee –half asleep and weary- as he ran soft, manicured hands through her hair and spoke lowly of his responsibility to King and Country, of his duty to the Lius. She recalls the slow whisper of his voice as he gestures to the third type of figurine, small peach Huli jing, that dot the paper at random intervals and the Jiuweihu that sits on the characters that mark Ba Sing Se._

"Lius," _he hums as he toys with the pieces,_ "have held Ba Sing Se strong for time immemorial, as long as there is a Liu in the city the city stands. If not," _he flicks the Jiuweihu over,_ "the city falls, and with it, the Earth Kingdom soon after." _)_

Power. That is what this is all about. Power and the new Earth King, _she surmises distantly._

 _The realisation sends a wave of poisonous fury rocketing through her. Her family are dead or dying for a power grab!? Do they not realise the implications of their actions!? Without the Liu family the Earth King would be open to manipulation by any of the court. Without the Liu family the networks that supplied Ba Sing Se with information and news on the rest of the country would fall apart. Without the Liu family centuries of unity across the city states and provinces of the Earth Kingdom would crumble._

 _All at once her pain and grief and_ disgust _fade into the background as the jagged shards of rage surge up through her veins. How dare they._ How dare they. HOW DARE THEY! _Her family have sacrificed more for this country than any in history, their struggles and pain strewn in blood across the canvas of time and whoever it is thinks that they can cast that aside, burn their legacy and stamp on the ashes!?_

 _No._

She will not let them.

 _The Fire Nation soldier still hovers above her, his chilling mask warping frantic grunting as he thrusts wildly into her (oh, Shining Mother, the_ pain) _and the Dai Li agent with his cold face and distant, hidden eyes still high in the trees but something, something has changed._

 _The_ anger _and_ wrath _and toxic revulsion/humiliation/grief/shame(ohspiritsGETIT_ OUT! _) shift and warp and fuse and grow sharp and cold in her mind. Crystallising into knifelike shards of jagged stone and hardening into unbreakable resolve. One day, she vows, she will make them pay for this, dash their rotten skulls against the rocks of her fury, stone them bloody and bury them alive. She'll pull down their precious walls on the fucking traitors in Ba Sing Se and show the subhuman Fire Nation filth that the earth does not burn._

 _She'll grow stronger, harder, harsher (like stone or ore, fired and heated and transformed into something new, something_ better _by a mountain of pressure) and split their flesh and rend muscle from bone._

 _She lies there cold and abused in the snow with the taste of burning bodies on her lips and the sights and sounds of traitors and monsters on her mind and s_ creams _her_ _rage to the sky._

 _She will be steel and she will make them_ bleed.


	3. Chapter 3

Wildfire

Chapter 3

A/N: So once again this is so much longer than I thought, but it just kinda ran away from me and kept growing. I tried to do a little world-building -will become more relevant later- to sort of set the scene, though it'll be interesting to see how anyone takes it! I played around a bit with some religious ideas from different cultures, I really am no expert, most of my information comes from the internet so if anything is wrong please don't hesitate to correct me and I apologise in advance if I offend anyone, it's not intentional. Anyway I've rambled enough, on with the story!

Disclaimer: I don't own anything recognisable

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Her seduction of the Fire Prince starts off slow, an intricate dance of heated glances across crowded rooms and the barest brush of skin-on-skin.

The weeks since the Fire Lord's birthday have been the most mentally stimulating she's had in a decade, probabilities and plans turning over and circulating in her mind as the game begins. The feeling of raw anticipation from it is more addictive than the most potent of drugs and the sheer _intensity_ of it leaves her delirious and giddy. She no longer spends her days in an endless haze of opium smoke and incense, her mind slowly withering under the constant lack of distraction and her sanity slipping as the memories of _before_ start to fade. No, now she spends her time in the silken confines of the royal harem plotting, using every shred of cunning and deception in her body to plan her next move.

Ironically, fate seems to be working in her favour. General Khan's actions appear to have sparked off a trend; it has become the 'in' thing for the unattached men of the court to escort the beauties of the harem to official functions, to drape whatever slut takes their fancy over their arm and smirk smugly, as if by doing so they have achieved something.

She finds the whole thing laughable on more levels than she can name.

This new fad has provided her with many opportunities to interact with the prince however, and she uses her time wisely: levelling sultry looks at him as they pass in the halls of the palace and tilting her body just so when he is around. The poor boy tries to play the game too, returning her gazes with hungry ones of his own and brushing his hand across hers whenever he has the chance.

His attempts are so heavy-handed that she has difficulty restraining herself from laughing in his face.

The harem is awake this evening and her fellow whores waft around her with sensual grace as they primp and preen before the men arrive. A mixture of the tall, angled forms of the daughters of disgraced Fire Nation nobility and the darker skinned, curvaceous ones of the poorer girls who caught the attention of the rich. They giggle and flounce as they talk in excited voices of attracting this officer or that lord, of marriage to rescue them from their lavish cages and a husband to raise them on high.

 _Ignorant chits,_ she thinks as she watches them with sharp eyes, _young, stupid and foolish, dreaming of things that can never come._ These sorts of women are the worst of them, Fire Nation born and so indoctrinated that they can think no wrong of their rulers, blind enough that even the true horrors of their situation escape them. They dress themselves up in thin strips of gauzy red fabric and layers of bangles of fool's gold, painting their eyes with kohl and their lips sensuous scarlet. _And for what?_ she snorts, gazing over at them all disdainfully from where she lays on the cushions, spread out like a contented cat, _so some fat courtier or vicious pretty-boy can fuck them while they pretend to enjoy it?_ She rolls her eyes and looks away.

The other class of women in the harem are the war prizes, women like her: the rich and beautiful of the Earth Kingdom, dragged to this gods-forsaken place in chains with their heads bowed and their spirit's properly broken. They sit around the harem with their green and brown eyes dull and dazed as they force themselves to forget and be pliant with narcotics. They serve their purpose at the harem, their broken brains making them perfect for the more sadistic among the court, their unresponsive bodies satisfying the most depraved of lusts.

She finds them equally pathetic. Earth is the element of strength, of perseverance and endurance. The Earth stays strong even as fires rage and storms blow, it weathers, it remains, it _survives._

They in their self-pity and weak minds have forgotten what it means to be Earth Kingdom.

The other women flit around as she lounges on a bed of garish tasselled cushions and contemplates the events of the night. Today is the day of an ancient Fire Nation festival, a day of worship for an obsolete and forgotten god and, as a consequence, there will be a great celebration at court.

She smirks to herself as she thinks of the chance this night brings for more interactions with her new toy.

Prince Ozai is a naïve child, her minimal interactions with him have taught her that. He has spent much of his life in the shadow of his elder brother and it shows. He has neither the control nor the finesse that Prince Iroh displays in his dealings with the nobility; he is brash and unrefined, so desperate for the attention of those around him that it is obvious to the point of pathetic.

 _He is lucky,_ she thinks with a vicious smile, _that he is Fire Nation, for court of Ba Sing Se would eat him alive._

She finds his behaviour simultaneously pitiful and hilarious, the court of the Fire Nation is so oblivious that they fail to see it, so wrapped up in their own petty scheming and the supposed _glory_ of their nation that they miss the greatest of opportunities hiding in their midst. The Prince is like a little deer dog puppy, so very young and malleable, some kind words and attention and he'd be eating out of their hands.

But the great and the good of the Fire Nation lack the subtlety and patience to make use of the prince's vulnerability, and so it falls to her, the last of the Lius, the greatest power in Earth Kingdom history, to weave her web.

 _And what a web it will be,_ she thinks with a predatory smile.

She rises slowly, languorously, from where lays sprawled on the cushions, the heavy golden metal of her jewellery jingling and clinking as she moves. The sound attracts the attention of the other women and they look at her with a mixture of distain and fear sharp in their empty eyes. In the ten years she has been a living in the harem she has made no friends nor treated the others with anything more than apathetic dislike and why should she? These weak-willed idiots and empty-headed sluts do not deserve her regard, none of them have ever shown even a shred of intelligence or ambition.

 _Prey instinctively know to avoid a predator,_ she smirks.

She makes her way over towards the sheet of burnished copper hanging over on the wall with long swaying strides and examines herself. The pink metal reflects back a faded and distorted image of her body, the angles of her elbows and jaw twisted slightly out of shape and the inky back of her hair dulled. Proper mirrors are for the privileged at the other end of the palace, so here, in the palace's sinful heart they make do with polished metal.

This festival requires less formal dress than any of the events she has attended, a defunct religious celebration rather than the pomp and ceremony of, say, the Festival of Purifying Fire, and so she has dressed for the occasion.

Her long dark hair is pulled up high on her head and flows in a stream down her back with her eyes heavily lined to bring out the green and her lips painted a vibrant red. She wears a single strip of scarlet silk wrapped around her breasts and her shalwar kameez are slit up the sides to display the long, pale length of her legs. Her form is weighed down but the weight of links, cuffs and plates adorning her body and the swirls of mandalas curl up her arms.

Her lips slide up into a satisfied smile as she examines herself, she looks like something off of the walls of an ancient temple or the pages of a mystic script, all planes of pale skin and the glint of gold in the firelight. She is using her beauty, as her aunts taught her, but no longer is she able to play the coy, enchanting noblewoman, enthralling despite the heavy restrictive dress and weight of societal expectations. The game has changed and now she must be the vixen, the seductress, Bai Mudan herself, mesmerize with her body in ways her aunts never did.

She tilts her head as she inspects her reflection more closely. The red fabric looks dark and delicious against the ivory of her skin and the stark contrast to her eyes makes them even more vivid and hard.

The woman in the metal _looks_ like a Zarin, like a sex slave, with her lazily slouching posture and hooded gaze. The picture is so different to how she'd imagined herself to be at her age, so very _Fire Nation_ , burning crimson and glimmering red-gold.

She suddenly feels a wild rush of rage flood her body and is overcome by the inexplicable urge to throw the shining copper from the wall, to _bend_ and _dirty_ the surface so the woman in it no longer exists and scream in anger. She wants to claw at her skin and tear the thin red silk from her body, to remove the taint that seems to seep heavier into her flesh with every passing day.

The woman in the reflection's eyes flash dangerously and for a second something dark and feral splits her face. But the moment is gone as soon as it came and she takes a deep breath and turns away from the mirror.

She has been too long in this place.

There is a rustle of cloth behind her and the gauzy veils that separate the room from the reception area of the harem part to reveal the wispy form of Madam Azari. The elder woman was a great beauty in her youth and the last consort of Fire Lord Sozin, but the years and continual application toxic makeup have steadily worn away at her. Her face is pale and hollow, a mass of sagging skin under layers of caked white powder and her head is completely bald beneath the wig.

Her eyes, however, have not dulled with age and they peer yellow, hawk-like and beady from sunken hollows in her skull.

"Zarin!" she calls, high and reedy, her voice a mere shadow of what it once was, "you have a guest!"

Yusheng slinks towards the madam with a look of coy amusement plastered on her face, her hips swinging precariously from side to side and her hair swishing behind her. Their eyes meet for a second and a mix of disgust and suspicion flit through the madam's stare and she allows herself the smallest quirk of her lips. She has found, over the years, that the green of Earth Kingdom eyes tends to unnerve those who rarely see it, and in the madam's case, once upon a time she was the most powerful and ruthless woman at court; no matter how good Yusheng is at hiding, the madam has always been wary of her.

She moves through the thin veils and steps into the reception area. It's a small room in comparison to most of the palace with swathes of orange and gold fabric looping from the ceiling and down the walls. The air stinks permanently of some sort of spicy musk and the sickening scent of pin yen that hangs about the room in a haze. The lighting is dim and the lack of windows makes the air heavy with a humid sort of heat that makes skin glisten in the gloom.

She peers through the half-light and instantly dislikes the man standing by the door.

He's twice her size with enormous, bulging jowls that spill over his high necked robes and conceal his neck completely. His eyes are a dull gold, just a shade too yellow to be amber and sit small and squinting just a little too close together on his face. They light up with a disgusting mixture of childish glee and starving lust when they see her and shamelessly trail down her curves in such a fashion that it's almost tangible.

He's a perfect example of gratuitous excess: from his tastelessly garish robes and bloated body to the multitude of precious gems that stud his pudgy fingers.

She feels sick just looking at him, people are starving in the Earth Kingdom! By the Jade Emperor, people are starving in the Fire Nation! And he has the gall the parade himself around like that!?

 _What a revolting little man,_ she thinks looking at him, _a fat, selfish pig who judging by the looks of him thinks only with his cock or his stomach,_ she sneers internally.

She allows none of this to show on her face however as she saunters toward him, time and experience having taught her that showing distaste does less than nothing.

His greedy eyes paw at her form as she glides forward, hiding her revulsion behind a growing seductive smile. Forcing back down her disgust, she loops her arm through his and drapes her body over his enormous one before looking up at him. He reeks of day old sweat and some sort of overpowering perfume that makes her nostrils flare and her throat dry; she swallows harshly, fighting the urge to gag.

He turns to face her and his little eyes widen slightly with surprise before his mouth stretches into a wide smirk, "Hah!" he laughs, his distended stomach jiggling as he leers indecently at her, "You're pretty nice looking for a dirt-bitch!" he says as he reaches down to grab her arse with one fat hand.

She giggles insipidly back at him while fighting the powerful urge to drag her sharp nails across his face and claws his beady eyes out. _Fire-scum, cock-sucker, I'll rip your fucking eyes out and we'll see how nice you think I am then!_ she thinks venomously at him running hand gently up his silk covered arms.

"Anything for you, darling," she purrs huskily, fluttering her eyelashes, the flash of rage dagger-like and crystalline under her skin.

The man grins and ogles her breasts where they push up against the heavily embroidered silk of his robes, "That can be arranged," he practically pants, licking his lips.

She grimaces internally and swallows back the bile climbing up her throat, tonight will not be fun. She knows this man's type: greedy and selfish in all things, including pleasure. She knows that later she will be expected to moan and groan as if he's the best lover she's ever had while he pounds away inside her like a man possessed. It will be uncomfortable and disgusting, painful at worst. He'll fail like a drowning man with his putrid breath in her face and his rolls of sticky flesh suffocating her as the poison crawls further up her veins.

She has the crazy desire to laugh at the horror of it, what would her parents say if they could see her now? What would Junjie think of Little Yu, his future queen?

They would be horrified she knows, a dark sort of amusement filling her at the thought, horrified at the depths of depravity she has sunk to just to stay alive.

She snaps herself away from these thoughts as the man turns around and guides them out of the harem into the gloomy halls beyond.

The palace interior is cool and dark and a chilly breeze slides wetly across her exposed skin. She can feel the hairs on her arms and navel rise against the cold as her flesh pebbles and shivers. The fat man in his voluminous robes feels none of this and the sweat continues to roll down his red face in shining drops.

The golden dragons on the dark walls watch them with unseeing eyes and the faces of grinning spirits smile eerily from their perches. The man babbles on incessantly about his own importance and position in court. Turns out that he's a high level administrator from the Department of Records, a fairly well regarded position with a healthy amount of influence, but nowhere near the amount that he boasts as he waddles through the halls.

His name is Vathak and she suspects, judging by the wealth displayed on his robes and the glitter of jewels that follows them as they walk, that he has other dealings lurking in the shadows. Blackmail and dark secrets, the laundering of wealth that comes with war and bribery that comes that comes with hiding someone's deepest fears.

With his position in the Department of Records, he would have access to vast amounts of information on the personal finances and estates of some of the richest people in the nation, on their trade and spoils of war. It would be easy for him to obscure what needed to be hidden, to hide what couldn't be seen.

For a price, of course.

 _Corruption at the highest levels of government,_ she thinks with a mirthless smile. Men like Administrator Vathak protected the real winners of the Fire Lord's war: the bloated warlords, grown fat and content with their stolen Earth Kingdom gold and the shadow traders, the slavers and drug dealers profiting from the devastated conquered and their triumphant conquerors.

Her contact with him sickens her further and she can almost feel the phantom taint on his soul slithering up through her arms.

As they walk she feels grateful that he obviously doesn't expect more from her than the occasional breathy laugh to an unfunny joke or a few empty compliments. To engage in actual conversation with him would be a chore she doesn't think she could stomach, not without an almost herculean effort on her part.

She can admire, however, in the darker parts of her mind, the slippery cunning and slimy intelligence needed to profit in the more depraved areas of humanity; the deviousness necessary to make money off of the super-rich.

The décor of the palace changes as they go, narrow, dim passages switching to wider, airier spaces where the scent of freesia and cherry blossom blows from small open courtyards and gardens. The setting sun casts long shadows on decorated porcelain urns and softens blood red walls as the scenes in the ornate tapestries change too. There are no bloody sacrifices and all-powerful gods in these images, instead fire spirits are jubilant and frolic in the aftermath of glorious triumphs. The battles are won not fought.

She takes it in with interest, these more welcoming areas of the palace are places she has never been. While still gaudy and too showy for her tastes, the design here is calmer and less aggressive, it lacks the symbols of earthly power that the rooms closer to the throne prefer.

They exit the main palace onto a wide courtyard that glows with the light of hundreds of tiny candles, scattered amongst the swirling alcoves of stone walls. Strings of coloured lanterns crisscross the space and the scent of sweet incense and spices fills the air. There is a subtle thrum of conversation as the elite mingle amongst themselves and the notes of a sitar song dance in the evening light. There are musicians and dancers, actors and acrobats, and a firebender in veils of scarlet that makes great dragons of flames dance around his body in rhythmic swirls.

It's beautiful to look at, soft and festive with an air of intimacy that speaks of balmy summer evenings and cooler winter nights, of hearth and home and a camaraderie that these people don't share. She can see it in their eyes as she and Vathak move slowly through the crowd, the tiny little cogs turning in their minds and the lies written in their skin.

The people barely give her a second glance anymore from where she stands, draped obscenely over a fat man's arm. The court is too used now, to seeing beautiful women clinging like overgrown limpets to some man, that it warrants barely a disapproving sniff. There are still some though: the old, the prudes and those that see themselves as morally righteous, that stare with accusing vermillion eyes.

She finds it foolish, what are they going about it? And why glare at her anyway? It's not as if she has a choice.

She meets their stares head on as she always has done. Greeting their distain and hate with predatory eyes and sultry smirks; eyeing both men and women with a heady scrutiny that would make even the most uptight of individuals blush and feel that flaming lick of desire down their spines.

Vathak escorts her like an overgrown doll towards the crowds, his waddling steps and bouncing excess flab unbalancing her with each swaying stride. He guides the two of them over to a group of older men dressed in what she would name as 'formal casual': lighter robes, in less bloody tones of red.

She narrows her eyes at them, drifting jade orbs over their faces in contemplation. She knows these men, recognises their faces. They all bare some resemblance to each other, as most of the true nobility do: all possessing golden, bright eyes and high chiselled features. _Hereditary_ _lords_ , she knows, _true_ _leaders_ _of_ _the_ _land._ It is writ in the Earth Kingdom almond of their eyes and the impossible pale of their skin, the mark of being the entitled descendants of their long ago conquerors, who, in the distant past forced fire to _bend_. She smiles a darkly satisfied smile, _Former customers,_ she thinks as the thoughts turn to ashes in her mouth.

Vathak toddles up to them like some pompous human boulder, a simpering grin sliding onto his face and the light of grimy ambition in his yellow eyes. "Gentlemen!" he booms, "how good it is to see you, my Lords!" he proclaims bending his head in acknowledgment.

They eye him coldly, lizardlike eyes unimpressed as they look down at him, "Administrator Vathak," the tallest one returns imperiously. She eyes him with interest, _The Fire Lord's nephew,_ she recognises him, _Lord Prakash,_ she smirks, _boring and…quick,_ she recalls and hopes that his cousin proves more impressive.

She can see when his gold gaze slips from Vathak's hefty form and find hers plastered to his side, their eyes lock momentarily and she winks, slow and secretive, delighting in watching the pink seep into his pale cheeks. He obviously recognises her, they probably all do, used trash that she is, she's fucked each and every one of them at some point, their memory a haze of sweat and slimy lust.

He draws his attention away from her and back to the disgusting excuse for a human at her side, "What can we do for you this evening?" he asks, all feigned politeness and barely hidden distain.

Vathak chuckles as if the mere suggestion is a joke and his eyes sharpen, "I do believe, my Lord, the question is what can I do for _you,"_ he says silkily.

One of the other lords, Lord Thakkur, head of one of the larger noble families, answers this time, his already rigid posture straightening further, "I'm sorry, Administrator, but I'm fairly certain that there is nothing you could offer us," his eyes flash briefly and a cruel smirk tilts the corner of his thin lips, "unless it's directions to the buffet." The other lords chuckle around him and smile nastily.

Out of the corner of her eyes she sees Vathak's expression flicker with fury before he gathers the feeling back behind a mask of deference and respect. The amount of rage in his brief lapse surprises her, the pure bestial loathing burning in the evening gloom.

 _Interesting._

The Administrator laughs self-deprecatingly in a breathy wheeze that make her cringe, "As much as I could do that, my Lord," he agrees, overly meek, "I was thinking more along the lines of something more…monetarily based," he finishes.

Thakkur's eyes thin to slits and he scowls forbiddingly, "What exactly do you mean, Administrator?" he enquires darkly.

Vathak's eyes widen in a parody of innocence and he tilts his head to the side, chins wobbling with the motion, "Well you see, my Lord, I was doing the accounts yesterday for the Fire Lord's taxes and the latest shipments of goods from the Fuhuo Province colonies, and I noticed a slight…discrepancy," he looks each of them in the eye and continues, "I know your son, Lord Thakkur, is the current governor of that area and that you, Lords Prakash, Vaidya and Yadav, are at present involved in a group trading venture in the Province, so I thought I'd bring the matter to you."

The air around the group grows heavier and hotter, subtly shifting to something more hostile. She watches them, unnoticed, from the side-lines, their bodies tensing and relaxing in the way a warrior does before combat and the simmering of phantom flames like halos flickering around their forms. They are bracing themselves, preparing for battle.

 _Idiots_ , she snorts to herself, such changes in posture are all but an admission of guilt, confirmations of Vathak's next statements. The administrator has won before he has even said anything, and from the tiny triumphant spark in his yellow eyes he already knows.

"Go on," Lord Prakash commands, fists clenched tightly at his sides and the lines of his shoulders stiff.

Vathak waves a pudgy hand around airily, "It's likely nothing," he says lightly, "but I couldn't help but noticing that the net wealth of each of your families and the expected worth of the goods shipped over from Fuhuo doesn't quite add up, it shows in each of your tax records," he blinks innocently at them, "I was just worried, my Lords, that you were being short-changed, it would pain me immensely if such upstanding figures of our society such as yourselves were being made fools of by those dastardly civilian contractors."

He leaves a moment to let that sink in, the delight in his yellow eyes evident as the faces of the listening lords pale with fear or fury. He narrows his eyes and lowers his voice, "However, if that were not the case, I can imagine the Fire Lord would be _very_ interested to know that some of the highest members of his court weren't paying their dues, especially considering that money goes towards the war that _his son_ is currently fighting," he smirks nastily and folds his hands into his sleeves, "but that really is none of my business."

She raises her eyebrows at that, _Well that was about as subtle as a badger mole,_ she thinks with wry amusement, _but this is hardly the best place for such confrontations,_ and she watches the lords reactions with interest.

Lord Prakash's face is ashen and hard with rage, and he looks bare inches away from setting the Administrator on fire, smoke beginning to curl up from his hands, "What do you want," he hisses viperously.

Vathak giggles lightly, breathily "Oh, nothing much, my Lord, a financial contribution for my silence should be enough," he purrs in glee, "and a favour, wouldn't want that information falling into the wrong hands!" he crows.

The lords look positively murderous, their eyes burning and serpentine, the incredulous rage of predator outwitted by prey. _But,_ she muses, watching them with analysing eyes, _they had this coming._ If they were dull-witted and idiotic enough to… _steal,_ in some senses of the word, from the Fire Lord without properly covering their tracks, they deserve to be beholden to the wishes of a greedy opportunist.

But Vathak went about this the wrong way.

Fuhuo Province is one of the more important conquered provinces, secured by General Tazron some three years ago after ten years of bitter and bloody war. It's a coal province, littered underground with that dirty gold necessary for fuelling the Fire Nation's vast armada of iron and steel and powering their factories. For exploiting an industry more valuable than any other to throne, Vathak could demanded anything from some of the most important people in the world. But he's let them know his hand. He's revealed to them who he is and what he wants when playing them from the shadows would have been so much more satisfying, when there would have been so much more to be gained.

 _Foolish,_ she thinks as the lords reluctantly agree, knowing when they are cornered, _for allowing them the opportunity for retaliation._

For all his cunning Vathak had made a vital error, the men he had just played weren't second rate slavers or minor nobility, they were the centre of the court with more money and power than any save the royal family. Enough that with some time and the right contacts, the administrator and his little empire of secrets and favours could be collapsed like a tower of sand and scattered to the wind.

She studies Vathak from the corner of her eye, _I give him a year at most_.

With his business with the lords done, he escorts the two of them away and deeper into the crowd, she feels the eyes of men and women alike follow her as she swishes her hips and purses her lips in a dangerous pout. She knows what effect the low light and dim glow of candles has on her skin, the pale luminous in the dark and the scarlet of her clothes deadly and vibrant as fresh blood; for all the filthy, crawling feeling she has from being on display like this, there is nothing quite like the thrill of knowing you are the most desirable thing in the room.

She watches idly as Vathak exchanges empty pleasantries and false platitudes with all manner of people, watches the way they move and listens to the tell-tale inflections in their voices as they weave lies and intrigue with hands that are both skilled and brash. It's easy. To see the movements of the court. The way Lady Ravi's body ever so slightly mirrors Lord Rahit's speaks of her attraction to him but the way his eyes look at her, he sees only opportunity, not lust. Admiral Ishan, who fingers twitch an inch every time he speaks of the success of his campaign shows the mark of a liar and Governor Hema, well, his desire for Advisor Dezar's position is well known and the barbs the two spit at each other are amusing to say the least.

She tires of it quickly though, taking apart the inner workings of the Fire Nation court is hardly a challenge, quick to anger as they all are. And the moment Vathak grows tired of her -preferring to waste his time drooling over the latest batch of Ty Family daughters _(she doesn't know if she's thankful or insulted)_ \- she weaves her way through the crowd with the innate grace of nobility and ascends some stairs to a dark balcony, tucked away overlooking the courtyard.

The view from up there is spectacular. It's dark now so the courtyard glitters and glows like a little sun in the dark, the people in their red silks and gold chiffons rippling like flares. In the distance, the city itself is a sea of light, transient and alive as the common people come out to celebrate.

From her perch in the heavens she feels lost, adrift. A lonely island separated by a thousand miles of cultural isolation and seventy years of war. It is times like these that she feels the absence of her family most strongly, a gaping hole in her heart where the edges still smoulder and spark with pain. She sighs and rests her arms on the balcony, allowing herself this moment of grief before the ever present crystalline wall that is her anger resurfaces.

It's hard, sometimes, not to spend too long reflecting on what ifs and what has been. She finds herself struggling with it more as each day goes by, struggling not to lose herself and her resolve in the past and ignore the present. She knows, deep in her soul, that the moment she does she will be gone. A shell, not unlike the other Earth Kingdom girls, a body: flesh, blood and bone but no more.

She sighs and stares up at the moon, a smiling crescent hanging in the sky and imagines that her family are up there, among the gods and spirits, doing what they do best in the courts of heaven and guiding the people of the Earth with expert hands.

She sees them in her dreams sometimes: their familiar faces faded with time but still their skin bubbles and melts and their hair catches fire and they _scream._ The world burns again and again in her dreams and the smoke fills her lungs until there is nothing left. Sometimes though, sometimes in the distance the Dai Li stand watching, unmoving. Faces shielded and eyes hidden and behind them the Earth Kingdom _burns_.

Those are the dreams she wakes up and _hates_. Hates with a passion that would put firebenders to shame. Opens her eyes to the red wall hangings that surround her cot and wants them all dead, wants to smother them in the overbearing crimson that coats everything and have them choke on their own noxious fumes as they crawl down their throats. Wants to bury the entire city of Ba Sing Se under a mountain and dance on the rubble for its treachery.

She's so lost in her own thoughts that she doesn't notice that she is no longer alone until:

"Lovely night, isn't it?"

She stiffens at the sound of the low, deep voice that drifts over from behind her and it's only with her years of restraining her reactions that she stops herself from whirling around in shock. As it is, she slowly straightens up and turns to face the voice, "It is indeed, Your Highness," she drawls back, voice low and soft in the dark.

From out of the shadows behind her Prince Ozai emerges, gold eyes glowing sharp in the night. His long ripple of dark hair blends into the gloom around them and the top of his silk shirt is left open revealing finely shaped clavicles and milk white skin. His youthful features are shaded and angled by the low light, making him look older and providing a glimpse of the man he will become.

She smiles, fanged and predatory, at the sight him and her jade eyes glitter across the shaded space between them.

He strolls towards her, tall and commanding and stops at the balcony next to her, clasping his hands behind his back in a mimicry of a position she has seen his brother adopt

His is a strange dichotomy, the prince: commanding yet anxious, entitled yet unsure. She can see the taught lines of muscles his neck betraying his nervousness and the shuffle of his feet as they dislike the position the stand in. He is uneasy about being alone with her, _Sweet_ , she thinks with a satisfied smirk.

Her dance with the prince has intensified with every encounter and starved for affection as he is, he is hopelessly easy to ensnare. When she looks at him she can the see the desire and disbelief warring in those reptilian eyes of his; burning, liquid, intense. It's always as if he can't believe she's even noticed him behind the accomplished warrior of his brother and the terrifying pillar of brutal intent that is his father.

But she alone sees the promise in his gaze, the coiled rage and stalk hidden in his stride. That boy has a mountain of smouldering resentment hidden deep inside, a lifetime of anger at being pushed aside and ignored and she recognises that all he lacks are the tools to harness it.

She knows from observing him that he must be a magnificent firebender, the power and pressure set into his stance and the lethal, predatory air of his walk tell her that. She'd bet all the tea in the Earth Kingdom that he's even more naturally talented than Prince Iroh, who for all his quick mind and concealed cunning stands far too much like an earthbender to encapsulate the destructive grace of fire.

They stand for a few minutes in silence, quietly observing the party down below, muted conversation and laughter drifting up to them and the constant sweet sound of music dancing in the still air.

She is quite happy to stand there in quiet companionship with him, the burning inferno of his presence keeping her warm as the air chills and the movements of the party below to keep her occupied. She finds it amusing, however, that he grows increasingly uncomfortable as the minutes of silence stretch between them and his eyes dart to her face and back.

 _Firebenders,_ she thinks, _so impatient_.

Another moment passes until she can see out of the corner of her eye his shoulders rise slightly as if preparing for something unpleasant as he turns to towards her. "I don't know your name," he says, his voice pitched like a command but she can hear the nervous question behind his words so she turns to him.

"Zarin, Your Highness," she says with a bow, angling her body in way she knows will give him a view of her cleavage. She smirks as through her lashes she can see his eyes widen and dart down before they stubbornly look away. His innocence is endearing as the faintest dusting of pink on his cheeks is visible as she rises, just about there in the dark.

"Are you enjoying it?" he says abruptly, "the festival, I mean."

She smiles slowly at him, savouring his nervousness, "It is lovely, Your Highness," she replies, watching him intently, "the palace is decorated quite beautifully."

"Yes, yes it is," he says more confidently and his eyes meet hers head on, gold on green. She feels a slight shiver down her spine at the heated intensity in them and likes the way all that restrained passion and reptilian cool feels on her skin. "Do you know what's it's for?" he asks with genuine curiosity.

She shakes her head slowly before tilting it to the side with a coy pout, "No, Your Highness, are you going to tell me?" she answers playfully.

He blushes a little more at her attention, his eyes roving her body in a way he seems to think is discrete. "You're from the Earth Kingdom, right?" he says, turning back to look once more over the balcony.

"Yes, Your Highness," she answers moving to stand closer beside him, close enough that if he wished, he could feel the heat of her bare skin through the thin crimson silk of his shirt.

He doesn't seem too bothered by her proximity, if anything he seems to unconsciously lean in towards her as he gazes absently at the flickering city lights in the distance. "Then you know that the Fire Nation was once ruled by the Earth King," he says, his voice tinged with disgust as he considers his conquered ancestors, obviously finding them lacking if the venom in his words is any clue.

She allows a vicious smile to grow unseen on her face, "Yes, Your Highness," she replies, letting none of the distant satisfaction she feels at that statement show.

Something dark and altogether cold flashes on the prince's face, twisting his lips into a sadistic grin that looks out of place on his young features. His gold eyes are dangerous and cruel as he adds, "Although it's quite different now."

For a moment she sees a flash of Sozin the Butcher and Azulon the Terrible in his eyes, of madness, decay and blood. An answering darkness rises in her and she momentarily contemplates grabbing his glossy hair and _slamming_ his face into the stone balcony; grinding it and smashing it until that _fucking smug look disappears_.

But she has better self-control than that.

The glint of madness on his face fades as he continues, "When the Earth Kingdom came they brought their gods with them," he begins, "and ours were seen to be savage and barbarous. As a consequence, much of the old ways were forgotten as they faded from public knowledge with only remote country villages and towns remembering the rites." He studies her closely from the corner of his eyes, "Eventually, only Agni, the central god of fire remained; few remember the others, fewer still believe," he finishes, something almost disgusted in his voice, as if shamed that his countrymen have forgotten.

She looks up to his face, hidden in half shadow, "So the festival, Your Highness?" she enquires softy.

He looks down and meets her eyes again, "Long ago it was called Maha Shivaratri and it was less of a celebration than a solemn night of prayers," he studies her face through the dark before continuing, "it was a celebration of Shiva, The Destroyer, one of the three principle representations of the cosmic functions of the universe, and through that: Brahmin, The Supreme Being."

She finds herself interested despite herself, Fire Nation tradition is not something she knows much about (or has ever had much interest in) so any information he can give her on it is new and potentially useful, "Who are these…representations, Your Highness?" she asks.

"There are three: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva; Creator, Preserver, Destroyer," his brow furrows in thought, "although those are rather simplistic descriptions and the records show that there are many different interpretations as to who does what and how important they are," he shrugs, "my personal interpretation of the gods may be completely different to someone else's.

"Brahma is the Creator of All Things, the Bringer of Knowledge and the Maker of the Universe. Vishnu is the Preserver of the Universe; he comes down to the world whenever it is threatened with evil and chaos to protect it and keep existence in order," he says matter-of-factly, as if these truths were never in doubt, there is a light in his eyes though, a fervour, the look of a devout man preaching gospel; he truly _believes_.

"And Shiva," his voice takes a more reverent edge, "is in some ways the Creator and Destroyer both. It is Shiva who destroys the universe so it can be made anew, Shiva who purifies all things so we can see clearly amidst the chaos. He is wrath and peace, destruction and life and his power is necessary so that our souls may shed their attachments and achieve _moksha_ , the end of the circle of rebirth."

She watches with calculating eyes as he tells her about his gods, her mind whirring at a hundred miles per hour as she fits this new information into her world view.

It explains a lot about the Fire Nation, these three gods being in their belief system, this idea of rebirth and cycles. In the Earth Kingdom the traditional religion is an amalgamation of a continents worth of beliefs that, unlike the Fire Nation it seems, never really came together in a central faith.

But the difference is clear.

In the Earth Kingdom the emphasis is on order and permanence, in the divine right of rulers and the cosmic order that puts them there. Earth Kingdom religion is about balance and the relationship between man and god. Cultivating your spirit in life so that the part of your soul which is _shen_ , the psyche, may ascend to become an honoured ancestor in death.

Although he has not told her, she assumes that like all other religions she knows of, Fire Nation traditional must also preach on order and harmony and good moral conduct. But unlike Earth Kingdom religion which is linear: you act in such a way and you get this reward/punishment and stay there, Fire Nation religion is cyclical, there is _rebirth_.

It is such a foreign concept to her, one that she has trouble fully understanding. To her knowledge the only being that is reborn is the Avatar, and that is only because the Avatar is a _xian_ , an immortal being of _tian_ (Heaven), manifested in humanly form as an aspect of _yang_ to protect the balance.

"How does rebirth work?" she asks curiously, her voice becoming sharp and direct and her body straightening, the mask and poise of seductive courtesan lost momentarily as she narrows her eyes in thought and considers.

He blinks, startled, at the drastic change in her persona and looks at her warily before answering, "Reincarnation, as I understand it, happens to the souls of all things, if you do good deeds in life -acquire good _karma_ \- you will have a good life and a good rebirth. The cycle of life, death and rebirth is _samsara_ , and the only way to escape it is too become unattached to all worldly things, to let go of selfishness and achieve _moksha_ : the realisation of the soul's union with God. Otherwise the soul is indestructible and you are forever reborn."

She reels at that. _Such a strange idea, so…Air Nomad,_ and the thought is a dark one, laced with cruel humour. The Air Nomads, destroyed by those closest to them.

But otherwise, _How very odd_ , the notion that all things are reborn, that in the end there is no permanence. It is telling when applied to the actions of the Fire Nation over the last century. If the soul is forever reborn and the world exists in cycles, the destruction of the current order, the balance that has held for a millennium, is merely the harkening of something more, something better. The presence of the god Shiva in the belief system confirms that. If what Prince Ozai says is true then Shiva is purifying, destruction itself is purifying (when seen from a certain angle) so the destruction of the planet through war merely makes way for a rebirth, for Brahma and creation.

 _Although,_ she thinks, _rationalising it like that is probably a gross misrepresentation of the original message._

She frowns and shakes her head, turning to look out over the balcony, "There is no concept like that in the Earth Kingdom," she says in answer, "when you die the _yang_ part of your soul, the _hun,_ ascends and connects to the heavens and the _yin_ part, the _po_ , returns to the Earth." She looks back to him, her body softening and relaxing again, her voice low and drawling once more, "So strange yet so interesting and unique," she says, a slow, lazy smile slipping up her face.

He relaxes slightly at her resumption of her previous façade and blushes a little at the smile, nervous youth yet again, "The Fire Nation is full of many unique and glorious ideas," he says, national pride written all over his handsome features.

Something feral and angry growls in her chest, _Indeed, Your Highness, would genocide be one of them?_ she thinks with a sneer.

But none of this shows as she takes a risk and presses herself into his side, the warm flesh of her body pressed up against the firm muscle of his arm. He stiffens momentarily before relaxing into her as well and looks back oveer at the party. Through their touching skin she can feel his heartbeat thrumming like the wings of a dragonfly and feels wholly satisfied that she has this effect on him and she smiles to herself, small and pleased.

They stand together admiring the view and the general buzz of the night. She takes great pleasure in the slight shivers that skitter over him as she runs delicate fingers on the bare skin of his arm, and enjoys the way his eyes keep darting back to her, as if to make sure that she's real.

It isn't long however before the music swimming in the air around them changes, fades from the upbeat mix of sitar, shehnai and tablar into something more haunting, less joyous and more aggressive. She is startled to realise she recognises it, not the whole thing, there are changes here and there and the pitch is somewhat different but the tune is unmistakeably… _Earth Kingdom._

She finds herself unconsciously humming along to the notes as they drift up to them and it is with confused and curious eyes that the prince turns and asks her, "You know this song?"

She jolts out of the trance the music has put her in and meets his golden eyes, "Yes, Your Highness," she acquiesces with small nod and the brush of her fingers on his, delighting in the way they twitch slightly at the contact, "It's of Earth Kingdom origin, from the Si Wong Desert, a woman's dance."

He looks intrigued and repulsed all at once, "Earth Kingdom? This is an old war song!" he says with an affronted frown.

She almost laughs at that, oh how wrong these Fire Nation idiots are! The Dance of Blades or the _Raqsat Shafarat_ is one of the most ancient and revered of the tribal people of the desert: a dance performed by women to demonstrate the power of their sex, a warning and a seduction both. The women veil themselves like warriors, leaving only their eyes bare, as they weave swords or pairs of daggers around their body in a sinuous display of mastery and grace. It is said that no man can face the blades and not both desire and fear the dancer, and that no dancer will accept a man who cannot meet her eyes during the dance.

She finds it appropriate, that of all of Earth Kingdom culture, this is what the Fire Nation take for their own. The heat and ferocity channelled in the dance are well matched by the scorch and burn of Fire Nation people.

This particular dance is close to her heart; among Earth Kingdom nobility it is a sign of breeding for a woman to learn the sword. Not for martial purposes, but as a display of her grace and artistry. As a child her aunts taught her the art of sword-dancing, of using the blade as you would a fine brush or instrument, rather than a weapon.

 _(As a Liu though, she learnt to use it to kill. To hide daggers up her sleeves and poison in her jewels and to show nothing at her victim's dying screams)_

The Dance of Blades was one such routine that she learnt. Not in its entirety -for she was too young- but enough of it that a Si Wong sword-sister would not murder her on sight for performing it. Her mother told her that as a Liu of the Earth Kingdom _(for Lius_ are _the Earth Kingdom)_ she should know something of all its peoples.

Thinking of the dance gives her an idea however so she tilts her head and gives the prince a secretive half-smile, the quirk of her lips and weight of her gaze leaden with heated promise and sinful things, "I know the dance, Your Highness. Would you like to see it?" she whispers, low and hissing, running her tongue along her teeth.

His pupils dilate and his breathing hitches as his eyes dart down to her mouth. His cheeks redden and she can see the lust, molten and swirling gathering in his eyes. His voice is deep and strained as he answers, "I…think I would."

Her smile grows into a full one, weighted and delicious and she moves away to give him a slow bow, "As you wish," she says with false deference. Her insides quiver with excitement and anticipation and she moves into the centre of the balcony to assume the first position of the dance. There is no way the prince will be able to resist, stronger men have tried and failed. And he is only a boy, a boy new to the world of desire who the women in his circles have probably never given a second look.

She likes that though, likes his innocence. She will be his teacher and his guide, his lover and instructor. Hers will be the first body he'll explore in its totality, the first he will grip in ecstasy as he comes undone. She will be patient and loving, firm and aggressive and he will see her eyes and her form in every woman he takes to bed after. Her name on his lips and her face on his mind forever.

She breathes in deep and raises her hands to the sky and lowers her eyes to the ornate stonework at her feet. She has no sword to grip or daggers to wield and it's been years since she last attempted this dance but it'll have to do. She casts her senses out to pick up the music in the night, that bittersweet, familiar stranger tune, and finds her place in it.

She looks up.

Her eyes meet his dead on, stone and fire, hard and blazing as she begins to move. The music is a snake twining around her body and she coils with it, her hands twisting and striking with imaginary blades and her body curving and spinning. She sees in her mind the enemies she casts down, the men and women she ensnares and feels, for a moment, lost in time. Feels _alive._

She never once looks away from him, her eyes bound to his through all her movements and turns, even as she bends and ducks. She imagines herself a sword-sister, wrapped and concealed in layers of multi-coloured, patterned fabric that whirls around her with every step. In her mind only her eyes show, gleaming and bright, and she channels everything she has into her gaze. Her face is a mask but her eyes reflect everything: the gaping maw of loneliness in her soul, the hideous, inescapable sadness that this dance inspires and the ever-present, all-consuming fury she buries deep. But most of all she channels the bright lick of desire she feels when she looks at him, despite herself; the intoxicating, burning-drowning feeling she has when she feels his eyes on her.

And he never once looks away.

As the dance nears its crescendo, climbs towards the climax, the movements grow wilder, fiercer and more complex. It is a battle being fought and she moves closer to him with every step. She can feel every inch of her body, has complete control over every part from the tips of the fingers to the ends of toes. She spirals and turns and her hair whips around in a trail of liquid midnight…

…And he doesn't look away.

She can see his eyes turn molten dark, a rich gold that scorches and blisters and hear his breathing quicken. He is enraptured. His eyes fixed to hers as if entranced.

Her muscles burn with exertion as she gets faster, faster and her heart races tandem to the beat. Her own insides are liquid under his gaze and she breathes hard and panting. She writhes and rolls, sways her hips with sensual grace as she improvises the moves she doesn't know and can't remember.

The air between them is heavy and burning and nothing else exists in the world apart from the two of them, tied together by the violent pulse of the dance.

And she stops.

The dance and the music ends and her face is scant centimetres away from his, their noses almost touching. They're both breathing hard and fast, panting gasps that fill the space between them. Her skin glistens with a thin veil of sweat in the moonlight and the intensity that ripples between their locked gazes' crackles and fizzes like lightening, electric and real.

For a second there is nothing but their shared breaths, no sound or life in the universe.

After a timeless eternity he surges down and captures her lips with his, their mouths meet in a fierce clash of wills and shared desire. It is sloppy and unrefined, like all first kisses are, but pulsing with so much passion and _anger_ that it is like no other she has had. Their noses bump and he gets lost in the unfamiliar rhythm so she wraps her arms around his neck and takes control. Her mouth opens in gasp of sensation that for once she doesn't have to fake and she slides her tongue into his mouth and wraps around every part.

The kiss is rough and forceful but as she takes the lead with her greater experience it changes into something slower and languorous. With her tongue she teaches him the art of kissing and it isn't long before he picks it up and they're both collapsed in each other's arms and moaning into each other's mouths. Their tongues chase and stroke and suck and teeth bite and for a brief moment she lets herself loose herself in the feeling.

He runs his fingers through the silken length of her hair and almost growls when she pulls at the strands at the back of his neck. But the overarching thought she has as her more rational side wakes up is,

 _Gotcha._


	4. Chapter 4

**Wildfire**

Chapter 4

 **A/N: So yeah, wow, been awhile. Incredibly sorry about how long it's taken me to update this, this chapter's been sitting around half finished in my files for _ages._ It's been a hard few months though, hard and stressful, I won't go into the details because I doubt you want to know but rest assured, things are better now. This chapter's more of a filler than anything else at the moment, plot starts picking up soon, I don't intend this fic to be _overly_ long, but you never know. As always, I check my own work so I'm bound not to notice every mistake, sorry in advance, with that said, read and enjoy :)**

 **Disclaimer: Anything you recognise isn't mine**

* * *

She can still feel the imprint of his lips on hers many hours after they'd finished kissing: soft and insistent and _burning_ like a brand. They had stood for an infinite forever in that darkened alcove of palace courtyard, lost in the waves of pure sensation, enjoying the feel of hands on skin and lips on flesh and feeling as the night melted away. She had kept control though, always in control, her own lust and desire chained and bound tight in the shadowy corners of her mind; deep and lost and walled away.

He had been an eager learner, quick to pick up the art of kissing, mastering the subtle changes involved. Hot and fierce or soft and gentle, the right way to feel your partner's responses and how to coax out delicious breathy moans that ignited in the dark. She shivers as she remembers the shuddering, whispery groans that had escaped him in the moments he was lost; the tortured growls as she'd sucked at the juncture between neck and shoulder and drew a path with her tongue to the sensitive skin by his ear.

The memories make her grin, a languid dark smirk, spreading slow and thick like honey; lighting her eyes as they flash with intent in the black.

The rest of the night had been…less satisfactory.

When Administrator Vathak had finally realised that none of the noble women were going to give him the time of day, he had remembered her and was angry upon noticing that she had disappeared. Of course, he could hardly say anything when he found her standing with the prince on the balcony, look stupid wouldn't he? If he couldn't even control a whore. And like the detestable, obsequious _worm_ that he is, he'd promptly fallen over himself in servitude to the prince, bowing so low that she'd thought he might just roll over.

She'd been watching Ozai's reactions intently and was unsurprised, although disappointed, at the flicker of glee that passed through his golden eyes at Vathak's grovelling. _That,_ she had thought to herself, _would be the first thing to go._ The prince's ridiculous desire to please and be noticed, his transparent delight at other people's deference, it was a weakness she would not allow or tolerate in her chosen champion.

Although she could empathise with his satisfaction at seeing others on their knees before him. Long had she dreamt, in the cradled and cherished corners of her darkest vengeance dreams, of the Fire Lord and his generals, the Earth King's court, bowed and _begging_ on their knees before her, supine and bleeding fear as they pleaded for mercy that didn't exist.

She supposed then, that it would be highly hypocritical of her to try and erase that particular aspect of his personality, plus, a desire to see the world bent before him could be useful.

After the administrator had finished his snivelling, the prince had turned his golden eyes on her and she'd felt the breath catch in her throat at the look of dark, burning _desire_ roiling in their molten depths. She'd almost smiled at that, how easy it had been to ensnare the boy, a few kisses in the dark and he'd already looked as though he could have devoured her right there.

But absence makes the heart grow fonder so she'd discretely dragged her sharp nails over the back of his hand as she'd sauntered back over the administrator and smirked in her mind as she'd felt his fingers twitch.

As she'd reached the administrator, she'd draped herself back over his fat, sweaty form once more and stroked a finger over the curve of his ear, "Did you miss me?" she'd whispered in his ear, drawing the words out into a hiss so her breath would blow softly over it.

She'd felt both satisfied and revolted as he'd shivered slightly at the sensation and had to hold back the bile rising in her throat as he'd wrapped one pudgy arm around her waist and pulled her into his side. She'd felt her skin crawl at the sensation of his clammy hand on her skin and her smoky, full-lipped smile became strained around the edges and cracked like glass.

But her mask had held, as it always did, through the aging politicians with their thin sagging skin and cruel, bright eyes to the vicious young boys with their entitled presumption and indoctrinated racism. Vathak was nothing in the scheme of things, the latest in a long line of pathetic meatsacks who thought her body was theirs by right, he was nothing she hadn't encountered a hundred times before. And he wasn't even the worst.

 _No,_ she'd thought, feeling that ever-present sense of _poisoned_ in her veins, _that honour goes to Lord Azar, may that sadistic fucker rot in hell and may the Yard of the Stone Mill crush his bones._

Vathak's eyes had stared down into hers with a hunger that she's all too familiar with, a possessive sort of thirst that chained all men and women eventually, and he'd whispered down to her in a manner that he'd probably considered alluring, "Indeed, but you can make it up to me later," he'd said with a dark smile.

Genuinely considering throwing him off the balcony, she'd laughed a throaty laugh full of intent and looked up at him from under her lashes, "Of course."

She'd chanced a look back over at the prince out of the corner of her eyes and was secretly delighted by what she saw. His eyes had been burning again, not with desire though, but with a heavy black fury that verged on madness, raging as he'd stared at the administrator, a jealous, possessive anger as he'd looked at where Vathak held her waist. His whole body had tensed up and his young face had turned hard as stone while his fists had clenched down by his sides.

Now hadn't _that_ been satisfying reaction? She smiles in the dark and feels the phantom heat of his gaze roll over her body. It had appealed to her both as a manipulator and as a woman, knowing that she'd had so much influence over someone in such a short amount of time. He was merely a teenager sure, but he was a prince, he'd spent his life around people who used others for their own gain, it spoke volumes of how little his father cared for him that he hadn't see it in her. In her family, _everyone_ had been trained in politics and manipulation, not just the heirs. It was irresponsible otherwise, a glaring chink in their collective armour just waiting to be exploited.

But Azulon, the old tyrant, had focused too much on his elder son and left the other to the wolves.

Well, _foxes_ in her case.

She sighs internally and rolls over to stare up the at ceiling, hating again the darkened red that greets her eyes. Her cot is dark and cramped, a small space containing a thin mattress and a cheap blanket, cordoned off from the other whores by rough stretches of sunburnt orange. It is nothing, nothing compared to what she was used to and nothing like what she wants; she spits in the face of the pathetic attempts at privacy that the palace tries to provide them with and curses the forces that brought her here. What need do whores have of privacy anyway? Her body is nothing, a poisoned shell for her mind, and she doesn't care if they stare.

No, the cots in the harem are not private, not for her: small enough for the illusion of safety, confined enough to remind her it's a prison.

She had stumbled back sometime earlier, turns out that Vathak had been just as she'd predicted, all he'd wanted was a pretty girl and a quick fuck.

After leaving the prince and his smouldering eyes on the balcony, Vathak had dragged her back to the party, pulling her around like some disobedient child as he'd tried to play pompous nobles and their entitled spawn. Sometimes it'd worked, most often it hadn't, but the whole affair had left the administrator prancing like an overeager monkey-cat.

She'd listened to it all as she'd followed him around like some kind of vapid limpet; none of it had been quite as charged as that initial interaction with Prakash and his companions, but most of it had been incriminating in some shape or form.

Vathak's poorly veiled insinuations and badly handled threats had confirmed most of her suspicions about the man and she'd felt herself grow steadily more disgusted and coldly furious as the night wore on. He was the worst kind of scum, a filthy slaver and a steaming pile of worthless _shit_ who'd paid for the vulgar embroidery on his robes with the screams of children torn from their parents and the dead eyes of women forced into her world.

She'd been forced to listen as he had laid out deals with some of the rich and powerful at the party: a girl for an old man's bed, a boy for another, a hundred men for one woman's mine and a hundred more sent to die in the factories.

It had been sickening to watch, horrifying to observe, as all that worthless Fire Nation _trash_ hadbetted and traded and schemed with the lives and lands of her countrymen, their freedom and worth. And _oh_ , how she had wanted to strangle them all with their own words, to wrap them in chains so tight it _burned_ and watch as the life and hope left their eyes.

They were all useless pathetic _scum_ as far as she was concerned _,_ not an iota of decency among them. And as they'd plotted and bought and sold humans like llama-cows they'd stared at her with hungry eyes, drawing them over her body like starving creatures would a feast. Their faces smug and condemning as some of the more cocksure bastards had run their filthy hands over her arse and sunk tiny toxic needles into her skin.

But she had laughed. She had smirked and smiled and watched with heavy shredding eyes. She had made them stare at the curve of her hip, the glow of her flesh in the lanternlight and had seen as they'd salivated over it. She had buried her hate and her violence deep in the darkened abyss of her fractured psyche and made them focus on the desirability of her skin.

She had revelled in her beauty and the power it gave but hated herself for needing to.

 _(Beauty is a_ weapon _, my darling Yusheng, use it and use it well)_

The night had worn on steadily, grating her nerves with every passing minute. She had listened, as she always did, listened and watched but the rest of the talk had been useless. Empty platitudes had fallen from the painted lips of influential woman like venom while slippery small talk danced like a whore on the tongues of powerful men.

There had been nothing useful, as far as useable information went, and in her position information was key. With a few careful words to one of her clients, she could topple entire institutions and kill a dozen men.

But all tonight had done was serve to remind her of all the reasons she hated the Fire Nation and as the night had cooled around her like a frigid lover, her patience had worn thin.

After to seeing to his business Vathak had led her off, pulling her along close to his side as he'd waddled and swayed from his weight and the drink back into the main palace. He'd been even sweatier then, if that were possible, rivulets of salted liquid had beaded over his oily skin and collected into stained patches on his garish silk robes. The smell had been atrocious: musty and overtly scented perfume mixing with body odour in a cocktail revolting aromas.

But she had had to put up with it, for the night he was her master and her body was his.

He'd stumbled and jerked through the ever darker, more oppressive corridors of the palace, dragging her along as he'd muttered to himself and laughed with obscene giddiness at his own jokes. He'd pawed at her body with fat, clumsy hands and grabbed painfully with corpse-soft fingers at the tender skin of her breasts.

His touch had been like acid, his drunken smiles like a knife, corroding her being with his taint as his blurry eyes had sunk the self-disgust deeper into her mind. In the gloom of the palace halls, she had let her face grow flat at hard, her eyes flinty and sharp as her head was pressed up to Vathak's shoulder and the scent of his rubbery skin.

He had leant down to her then, leant down and trailed, thin cracked lips over her shoulder and neck in a parody of what she had done with the prince; a nauseating facsimile of a lovers' kiss that had decorated her skin with a trail of slime that had made her insides churn and her stomach revolt.

She shudders and digs sharp nails into her skin in remembrance, imagining that the fleshy part of her palm is the soft meat over Vathak's, and all the others who have _dared_ touch her's, hearts as she rips them out still beating.

She _hate, hate, hates_ this place and all it stands for. The blood red and burnt ash colours that sting in her eye and damp heat that swamps her lungs. She runs now on pure fury and malice alone now, her ambition and vengeance becoming the anchor against the deadness that always waits. She imagines that there is something broken in her now, something deep and important that fractured in the woods outside her burning home. She likes to believe that the continuing strength of her wrath is a sign from the heavens, from her ancestors and the spirits that she is on the right path. The thought makes her smile sometimes, a shattered sharp thing that bites at the edges.

 _(But inside her body is rotted and dying, each unwelcome touch poisons as the seed forced inside her kills her a little more each time)_

As they'd made their way through the silent palace ( _silent, like a tomb or a grave_ ) they had wandered into the quarters that housed the lesser of the Firelord's court when they were in attendance. Those who had money and skill but not the bloodline to back it up, little more than spoiled rats in the eyes of the upper echelons of Fire Nation society.

The walls had been the colour of cooling lava and fire spirits had howled from the top near the ceiling, glittering burnt-gold grotesque faces peering from behind iron suns. Sharply curved arches had lined the halls, each one covered with stark interlocking flames that reached towards the heavens and lanterns at regular intervals had made each one glow.

It had been as garish and ostentatious as the rest of the palace, the architecture and style somewhat older and more dated but flashy and expensive all the same. The walls had melted wealth as the sun melts butter: slow and thickly oozing like pus from wound and the imagery was bloody and dark. But it was the conspicuous lack of dragons though, there among the décor, that told of the stark lack of royal favour those that stayed here endured.

 _No wonder Vathak was so pathetic and submissive to Ozai,_ she had thought, taking the whole area in with calculating eyes, _man's probably never been let within ten feet of the royal family, let alone spoken to a prince._

The administrator had clumsily led them to a door about halfway down the hall, hidden between two large edifices of burning women in rapture, their heads thrown back in pleasure/pain as above the door the many-armed Agni controlled the flames. Vathak had been fevered then, his drunken eyes devouring her form as he'd struggled with the door. "Let me," she'd whispered close to his ear, feeling that sinfully guilty satisfaction as his eyes had rolled back in pleasure.

She'd pushed open the dark wood door and stepped inside the apartments languidly, pulling the stumbling man forward by one of his sickeningly clammy hands. The room had been dark and somewhat small for a palace room: a single, large black wood bed and some ornate expensive furniture. There had been some rather worn looking pieces of art though, a god, a spirit, a beautiful woman by a river, but nothing too fancy. Certainly nothing compared to the rooms of some of her more influential clients.

 _I bet that makes him practically_ seethe _with jealously,_ she had thought with cold satisfaction, _I bet it makes him rage and cry his petty little heart out._

He had tried to push her to the bed then, sloppily with eager hands and she had ripped them both off within her own mind and fed them to him. She had turned it around when he failed, taking control, experience having taught he was too drunk to know what he wanted. She couldn't count the number of times she'd done this before.

Feeling sickened and numb, she'd pushed him to the bed lazily and clambered over him with a seductive smile and dead eyes. She had wanted this done, and quickly. His drunkenness was a boon in that respect, he'd be quick to finish and probably fall asleep after, allowing her to slip away, her _duties_ complete.

He'd gazed up at her then with lust drenched eyes and she'd wanted so badly to dig her nails into them as he'd drunkenly reached out to her form. She'd batted his hands away with a slow smile and a hidden furious snarl and instead straddled him to reach down and untie his robes.

She had been able to feel his growing desire for her pressing hard and insistent up against her core, and spared a moment to wonder at the fact his cock still worked underneath all that fat. She was good at compartmentalising in these situations, taking her brain back to observe as if it wasn't her, but somehow still the sensation of being intrinsically dirty remained.

She'd felt rotten and used and disgusting as she'd pulled apart his clothing to run her manicured hands over his bloated flesh, felt every inch the worthless slut as she'd looked up into his dilated pupils and smiled slow and coy. She'd lowered her head down to layer open mouthed kisses along his non-existent neck and drag her lips down his chest to his nipples, toying with them with her tongue and fingers and feeling his form shudder and arch underneath her. He tried to babble something at her, but she hadn't listened, he'd been too drunk to remember much of this come tomorrow and so playacting the complicit lover hadn't been necessary on her part.

He'd shivered and groaned and tried to reach for her as she'd run her other hand over his cock through his robes, clasping the firm length through the heavy fabric. Everywhere she'd touched had felt like a brand on her skin proclaiming 'whore' to the world and she'd stuffed her disgust as far down as it would go, where it festered in her stomach like a wound.

She'd undressed the rest of him quickly, wanting this over and done with as fast as possible and stroked her hands and mouth over his bloated cadaver skin as she did.

She never kissed him on the mouth though, wanting to keep the prince's passion there, if only in secret, and lock it away with all her cherished dreams and desires.

She'd toyed with him: his skin, his cock, an ugly bulbous thing, swollen and magenta like a bruise and left him panting and groaning to the heavens as she'd played his body like an art. He'd scrabbled at the crimson bedsheets beneath him like a dying man, ugly in his pleasure, and groaned and panted as she'd strung him taught.

When she'd been able to tell that he was close, she'd slipped off her shalwar kameez with practiced ease and lifted herself so her cunt was poised right over his straining length. He'd looked up at her, drunkenly fascinated by the sickening picture their almost joined bodies made, and she'd given him a false smile laden with insincere promise. He'd gasped as she'd gripped him, running the swollen head of his cock over her entrance in a vile tease that'd made her shrivel a little in the corners of her mind.

She'd been bone dry down there, completely and utterly unaroused and to be fair, she never was. She'd had more lovers than she cared to think about, more than she ever wanted to admit without feeling the parasitic claws sink in deeper, but not one had been taken willingly. Men and women, old and young, she had serviced them all: from sadists and submissives to those with more _unusual_ tastes but not one had been her choice.

Sometimes she thought it sad, when she was feeling particularly self-pitying, that she had never felt the touch of a real lover. A man or woman whom she'd chosen, who touched her not for only their pleasure, but hers as well. But that was not for her, not in this life, not ever. It made her angry, furious, that the Fire Nation had robbed her of this too; even if she'd been trapped in a loveless marriage to an infantile Earth King, she still would've been able to have discrete affairs lovers of her choice. But the Fire Nation had taken that from her too.

She snarls in the dark and her face contorts. She thinks of hands that aren't poisoned and lips she wants to touch. She thinks of true pleasure and shared ecstasy.

(She thinks of Fire Nation oaths and how this place has stolen what others willingly pledge)

 _My life for the Fire Lord, my body and soul to His cause. May I devote my entirety to His glory, or may Agni strike me down._

 _(Her name and her legacy, her pleasure and her pain, lest the Spirits condemn her and her_ shen _rot)_

She'd given Vathak once last intense look, the hatred and disgust in it hidden deep in the dark, before lining him up at the entrance to her cunt and taking him in.

It _hurt_ as it always did, both physically and deep in her soul, splitting and souring every time. She'd felt her muscles clench around him at the unwelcome intrusion and he'd thrown his head back in a groan of ecstasy as his body arched, pushing him deeper.

She could've killed him then, so defenceless and lost in his own ill-gotten pleasure, she could've lent over and wrung his fat neck; watched in glee as the life left his piggy eyes. But she hadn't. Instead she'd arched her own neck and exhaled her own lengthy groan, practised and perfected over the course of many clients. She'd felt him inside her, his foul flesh enveloped by her own tainted body and felt the contradictory urge to both laugh and cry. The spirits had been cruel when they'd sentenced her to this life.

But she had long ago lost faith in the Spirits.

The only good thing about her encounter with the administrator had been that she'd been in control, she'd had him flat on his back and yearning while she'd ridden him like an ostrich-horse. It had been uncomfortable, yes, uncomfortable and painful and repulsive to her very core, but at least it had been her on him.

Not like others, others who'd pushed her down and used their strength and her inability to refuse against her. Who'd shoved her to the mattress and _taken_ , ripped her insides in two as she'd held back screams of pain and cries of horror.

 _(Men with whom the mattress had turned to dirt, the sheets beneath her fingers to the biting texture of rocks and twigs. With whom the scent of incense and perfumed skin became that burning flesh and ash on the wind as heavy armour had pressed down on her and_ ohSpiritsGETOFFME! _)_

Those men she hated most, men who'd forced her to weakness, who'd stripped her down to the crying child who'd watched her family burn and brought back the hungry nothingness at the edge of her mind.

The administrator had moaned beneath her, a strangled, whining noise -more akin to a dying walrus-yak than a man- and arched and flexed his bloated form as much as he'd been able to manage. She'd panted above him as she'd bounced on his cock, breathy, whispered gasps of fake pleasure with rolled back eyes and fluttering muscles; called out his name in affirmation and encouraged him with lying sighs.

She'd felt both sick and detached the entire time, it hadn't been her and yet it had. Her every action had been methodical, calculated to bring him to his end in the least time possible: every noise, every move, every grind of her body around his and every clamp of her inner muscles. It hadn't been hard to tell what set him off the most, it never was with men, such idiotic, obvious creatures, slaves to their bodies and their urges.

It hadn't taken long before his body had tensed up, his muscles stringing tight like a bow, and he'd shouted out wordless cry of bliss as he'd thrust up inside her. She'd felt his seed rush to fill her: hot, hateful, rotten filth that forced bile up her throat and her nails to dig crevices into her palms.

She'd blinked a few times, stared up to the ceiling with a cold, numb placidness and toxic hate burning in her heart as she'd felt the evidence of his pleasure slosh inside her.

After his orgasm, Vathak had flopped back to the bed with drunken exhaustion and fallen asleep, his ugly face flat in rest. After counting to ten in her head, she'd numbly climbed off of him and felt his flaccid cock slip from her and a single trail of cum run down her thigh. She'd calmly used the edge of the scarlet sheet to clean herself up before pulling her trousers back on and slipping from the room like a ghost.

Inside she'd _burned_. Burned with a cold, hard fury that was only half chained and wanted for a wild second to go back inside and screech as she pounded and scratched at his flesh, to rid the world of his _filth_ and watch as his blood dripped like sour wine to the wooden floor.

But she'd left, she had been under no obligation to stay and hadn't. Her anger was tightly controlled and the administrator hadn't been nearly important enough to warrant a whole night's service, nor useful enough for her to endure post-coital snuggling with the fat lump. She'd left the moment their fucking had ended and walked calmly back to the tiny cage that served as her space with her face empty and her green eyes flashing and cold.

It had taken years to achieve that level of apathy though, when she'd been younger, after leaving whatever disgusting shit she'd had to service that night she'd always found somewhere to hide. The palace had enough empty alcoves in hidden corners if you knew where to look. Tiny dark spaces closeted away in amongst the suffocating crimson, the remnants of ancient passageways and lost safeguards. Places where she'd been able to fall to the ground when her legs had given out in horror and uncontrolled shivers had wracked her adolescent body. The shadows in these corners had concealed her for years when she'd bled soundless tears from a blank face and clenched her muscles so tight she'd felt numb. Sometimes she'd thrown up, sometimes she'd cut herself, scratched herself until the scarlet of her veins had joined the scarlet in the halls of the palace in an attempt to rid herself of the deepening rot.

But she'd grown up since then. She'd learnt to cope out of necessity and grown strong from the trials she'd faced. Her heart was a heavy frozen thing now, more diamond than stone: hard and sharp and locked up inside an impenetrable vault. She still felt the anger, her constant companion and only friend, sharpened and poised like knives to the throat, and despair was always just around the corner, but she never allowed them to affect her visibly.

To do so would open her up, leave parts of her soul visible to be tainted and claimed like everything else she was and she couldn't allow that. Her rage was hers, her fury was hers and the deep, yawing abyss of anguish was hers more than anything. Her private grief and pain.

So she'd sauntered, head held high and hips swaying back to the harem. She'd paid little attention to the silent, lustful gazes of the guards, or the lowered condemning eyes of servants. Only giving them lingering hungry looks here and there to unnerve.

She was a Liu at heart and she was _better_ than these stupid, ignorant people. Her pedigree was impeccable and her lineage contained a dozen kings. They had _no right_ to look at her as if she were scum, no right stare at her body as if it were meat, in days gone by she could've had them all beaten bloody on a whim.

The harem had been dark and silent when she'd returned, a few women still awake lazing on cushions with dazed eyes for those who visited late into the night, but otherwise empty. She'd swiftly made her way through the smoky air of the entrance chamber to the baths out the back where she'd stripped off and jumped into the warm water.

The harem was connected to a natural hot spring that ran under the palace, making it possible for warm baths at any point of day. It was the one luxury her and her fellow whores and mistresses were afforded and she'd sneered at it when she'd first seen it, as if cleanliness made all this any better.

She'd scrubbed herself all over, drowning the urge to rub her skin raw in the scented waters. She'd needed to get the brand of the administrator's touch of her skin, to wash the proof of her sin and curse from between her legs. She'd sunk under the waters, held her breath until her lungs burned and her vision darkened and contemplated in those soundless moments how easy it would be to just take a breath of the perfumed water and just _let go_. But as always, she'd risen back up and felt disgusted at her own weakness.

She'd left the bath in silence, dried herself and headed naked to her bed, stepping as a ghost through the bland, dark halls.

Which led her to now, staring at the blank red ceiling, the hate and wrath pulsing through her veins with every beat of her heart.

She lies there, in the heavy darkness, with wide cold eyes and her hair splayed out around her like spilled ink and snarls. Every night like the one she had breaks a piece of her off a little more, chips a shred of her soul off with every poisoned touch. The prince had been a reprieve: innocent and earnest, genuine in his desire for her but it was not enough.

She wants _out_ and she wants it now. She wants the world burning around her and screams like symphonies in her ears, she wants blood under her nails that isn't hers and to laugh at someone's pain until she cries. She wants blood and justice and vengeance and she is _tired_ of sitting stagnant in this fucking place.

Seeing the prince that first time with his burning innocently mad eyes had woken dead parts of her that didn't want to go back to sleep. She _feels_ now, more than she has in years and there's a crazy hunger in her that wants to devour the world.

The prince is the first step, so young and angry and trusting, a gateway to all the power she could ever dream of and she had him now, of that she was sure. He was a teenaged boy and she a beautiful woman, a beautiful woman who had listened to him when he talked, looked to him in crowded rooms and kissed his petal-soft virgin lips with a hunger that had surprised her.

There was a passion in him, something intangible and _real_ and for some reason when he looked at her she wanted him to _see_. Yes she was using him, probably always would, but there was a part of her that saw the burning in his eyes and wanted to grab on and burn too. He'd made her feel _alive_ , after years of slowly dying and taking childish satisfaction wherever she could.

And it was _glorious._

She closes her eyes then and takes a deep breath, tomorrow is a new day with new opportunities and she has taken her first step towards her ultimate goal. She allows herself the satisfaction of winning something after so long, and falls asleep with Ozai's kiss on her lips and his eyes blazing in her mind.


	5. Chapter 5

**Wildfire**

Chapter5

 **A/N: Hi again, thanks once more to everyone who reviewed, favourited or followed, you make my day! This bit's more sort of backstory, apologies if that's not your thing. Also I've tried to portray Yusheng/Zarin's mental state as best I can, but since (thankfully) I have no personal in anything she is experiencing it probably isn't accurate, if you have any tips or criticisms, please do let me know. I check my own work so I _will_ miss things so sorry about that, anyway, on with the story!**

 **Disclaimer: I (obviously) don't own ATLA**

* * *

 _They drag her out of the forest in chains._

 _Yusheng's wrists and ankles are bound tight by black iron that wraps around her limbs like metallic snakes and her shattered feet shoot bolts of pain with every step. The stretch and pull of walking snags painfully at the burnt skin of her calves and thin rivulets of blood run down her hands from where the manacles chafe._

 _After the forest she is taken to the soldiers camp and bound tight. The memories of the fire are still raw in her mind and every time Yusheng closes her eyes she hears the screaming and sees the contorted faces of her family as they writhe in agony. It's hideous and terrible; the skin under her eyes is blackened and bruised and her body is wracked by shivers._

 _She's still wearing her dress, her favourite with the leaf-green silk and golden dragonfly embroidery, but the material is burnt and crumbling around the edges now, torn and stained; the once soft green smeared with soot and dirt and the fabric smells like death. On her head, her hair sits in dirty matted clumps, threaded with ash and blood and the few ornate pins than remain stick out of the mess like broken swords on a battlefield._

 _Her eyes are bloodshot, her every movement aches. Her pale skin is decorated with a rainbow of blues and yellows and her broken bones protrude in ugly lumps_

 _But the worst thing, the very worst thing, the thing her mind shies away from every time she gets close to thinking about it, is between her legs._

 _There's a burning, twisting pain that sits low in her abdomen and pulses at the apex of her thighs, a wound of both mind and body that bleeds sluggishly at the back of her thoughts. She won't think about it (_ can't _think_ _about_ _it) but it's there. The tops of her legs are decorated with dried blood and…other fluids (_ don'tthinkaboutitdon'tthinkaboutitSTOP! _) that crack as she moves and it's a horrifying reminder that she has been violated in the most disgusting of ways (she feels worthless and poisoned inside, like someone opened her up and sucked out anything of value and replaced it with filth)._

 _It's a sickening sensation, she feels alien in her own skin: an interloper, she doesn't belong. It takes more effort than Yusheng cares to acknowledge to stay present within her mind, every second a battle to stay aware and not just shut down and give in (but inside, inside, there is a part of her that is dead and she_ grieves _)._

 _The journey to the Fire Nation is long and painful. She spends two weeks trussed up on the back of a Komodo rhino and another on a steamship across the ocean. It's torturous. She receives no medical attention, no aid, and her broken bones and torn insides throb painfully like a dying heartbeat. The beast smells disgusting and the soldiers around her jeer and discuss in great depth the broken and burnt remains of her family. It takes all her self-control not to scream at them, to spit in their faces and snarl and snap (all her energy not to dissolve into useless and pathetic floods of tears because they're_ gone _, all of them_ gone _)._

 _She wants to kill them all, make them hurt in ways she has only heard about in the darkest corridors of Ba Sing Se. Wants them ruined and begging and the music of their screams._

 _But she can do nothing, helpless, spoiled thing that she is. Dirtier by the day and paralysed by the lingering iron taste of fear and the scratchy smell of smoke._

 _The travelling deadens her; the constant pulsing pain and dreary drudgery of the journey dissolves her awareness; the hunger and thirst dull her mind. Every night when the soldiers sleep she memorises their faces with greedy eyes, imprinting their features onto her brain and swearing,_ swearing _that one day their deaths will be hers._

 _But the ship._

 _The ship is the worst._

 _Yusheng is shoved into a dark, windowless hold too small for her to stand up in and provided with nothing, not even a bucket. The air is dry and stale and the scent of filth grows overpowering as the days pass. She stews alone in the dark, with only her thoughts. The memories of that night playing chase in her brain as they dance around in her head._

 _They scream at her if she tries to sleep, taunt her with that split second before it all went wrong. When there was only her, Junjie and the music. They remind of only three weeks ago, when a thousand bright, shimmering futures had stretched out before her like tiny stars of infinite possibility and all it took was less than a second to destroy it all: Junjie's infectious laugh and sparkling eyes, her mother's beautiful dark hair, her father's charismatic cunning and the hundred different things unique to her family. That shining future is nothing but a void now, a thing of endless shuddering uncertainty and an abyss of dead dreams._

 _Yusheng's cell is stiflingly hot, a dry, airless heat that aggravates her burns and heats the grey metal walls around her. The thrum of the ship's engine never lets her forget where she is and she it hates for the constant growling. It sounds like a sleeping beast, something huge and terrible, a slavering animal of the underworld just waiting to eat her bones._

 _It disorientates her because she can't tell in that cell, if she is already dead. Maybe she died on the forest floor with twigs in her hair and a man in her body and this, this prison is her hell._

 _It certainly feels like it anyway: the suffocating black and the stagnant, heated air; the stench of her own filth makes her nauseous and ill and if it weren't for the pain, the darkness would swallow her whole. Her empty insides churn and her lower abdomen throbs a hideous, bruising beat as the tight blackness around her grows closer and more smothering by the minute. It feels as though the walls are closing in on her in the cell, with nothing but her thoughts and the distant vibration of the ship's engine the rest of the world ceases to exist._

 _Her mind is a strange mirror realm now, full of fractured edges and twisted emotions that vie for dominance in amongst the shattered catacombs. On one side, there is the hatred: an angry jagged thing, cruel and wild and vicious with sharp edges and overpowering weight. It festers in the depths of her heart, becomes something putrid and infected, rages like a rabid animal and bays for vengeance. It makes her tense and wound tight, distracts her from the physical pain with a heady cocktail of adrenaline and pure fury. It cries out at her, she_ will _get revenge. On the Fire Nation, on the Dai Li and the fucking traitor in Ba Sing Se that sold them out. She'll peel the flesh from their bones, pull out their eyes and slice them bloody._

 _When Yusheng thinks like that her face contorts, her young, pretty features snarl in rage and her eyes flash like shattered crystals. The streaky, tearstained dirt on her face and the blood that stains her teeth makes her look feral and the soft youth under the fury is terrifying to behold._

 _It's easier, far, far easier to hate and rage than it is to think of all she's lost, to become trapped in the despair and desolation that calls and screams from somewhere in her subconscious. That was the other half of her mind. The Nothing. The Void._

 _An aching chasm that promises escape, that promises forgetting. It whispers seductive songs of an end to the pain and a numbness where she wouldn't have to spend her every moment grieving, yearning,_ screaming _(it promises a life where she won't feel worthless and spoiled with venom threading through her veins and rot in her lungs). It is tempting, so very tempting, to just slip away and forget, to give up and give in. She could live out the rest of days in the sanctuary of her mind._

 _But she can't, won't._

 _To give in to that numbness, that nihilistic state would be to let them win. If she ceased to be then the Fire Nation would win, her captors would win. The Liu would die with her and their legacy would fade into obscurity. There would be no one to revenge upon the betrayers and the killers, in her heart, she knows her family would never have peace._

 _That is the Liu way after all. Their enemies pay. Always._

 _When she finally arrives in the Fire Nation she's practically catatonic. She has barely moved in a week and not spoken in longer, her eyes have grown used to near blindness and the humming of the engine has become her whole world. It comes as a shock when it shuts off, as if the universe has suddenly shifted off-kilter._

 _The door to her cell is heaved open with a shrieking groan and the gloomy light of the ship's corridors floods the tiny space. After a week of near constant silence and utter darkness the assault on her senses is excruciating, the dim light is blinding and the invasion of cleaner, wetter air is like nails across her tender skin. She recoils like a startled animal at the intrusion and blinks rapidly as the dull brightness stings her eyes._

 _A guard dressed in the heavy black metal and spikes steps forward into her cell, reaching towards her with one gauntleted hand as he holds up a small flame in the other. Through her hazy blindness, all she can make out is the eerie white of his mask and the angry flare of the fire. She flinches back automatically, scurrying backwards through the filth and dirt to curl in on herself in a primitive shield. Her body shivers and shrieks in pain and she stares at his ghastly visage with wide, half blind eyes._

" _Up, Dirt!" comes the gravelled echo of his voice from underneath his helmet._

 _She pushes herself back further, pressing herself right back into the heated metal of the ship's hull and cringes away from the guard as he steadily becomes clearer. Her broken feet shriek in agony and she gasps out in pain._

 _He makes a noise that could be a sigh but could also easily be a growl, "I don't have time for this!" he mutters to himself, reaching into her cell and pulling her to her feet by her bruised arm, "Move, Bitch!"_

 _Yusheng lets out a whimper as her shattered feet are forced to support her body weight for the first time in nearly three weeks and her legs collapse underneath her. Limp and weak from weeks of substandard nutrition and lack of use, they refuse to cooperate and she is left to flounder, half suspended by the guard. As she stumbles, her slight weight barely affects him and he holds her up by her arm, yanking at the muscles in her shoulder painfully._

" _Useless," he grunts, as he grabs her roughly and throws her over his shoulder; she lands with a thump on the plated metal of his armour, the unyielding steel bruising her battered body further. He lumbers up through the ship, twisting and turning through identical narrow corridors, guided through the dark halls by the flame burning steadily in his hand._

 _Yusheng barely pays attention to any of it, the pain in her body makes her woozy and her hazy vision blackens around the edges. However, as they climb through the ship and the air becomes damper and warmer, she suddenly and irrationally yearns to be back in that shuttered, dark coffin-space. It's ridiculous, she knows, pathetic and weak, but she doesn't want to go outside, doesn't want to face what she knows will be the Fire Nation._

 _But her wishes are meaningless now, her prayers fall on deaf ears and she is carried, limp and unresisting, up the steel ramp on to the deck._

 _The heat and humidity hits her like a wall and she feels a fresh layer sweat begin to build up on her skin. The sun is a burning furnace and the air a suffocating damp, it's so different from the Earth Kingdom. Heavy and sticky and hard to breathe with a writhing sun and a blue sky the colour of exotic poison._

 _She hates it already._

" _Brought her up, Sir," the guard carrying her says as he moves toward the only man on deck with no mask._

 _She gazes over at him with dull green eyes and a still face. He's a small man, deceptively thin with piercing yellow eyes and deep furrows cracking out from around them. She instantly dislikes the way he eyes her from where she hangs over the guard's shoulder like cargo and it sparks in her some form of resistance. She glares back at him with all the roiling hate she's able to conjure through the exhaustion and pain, watching as his lips tighten and thin into an unattractive slash and the furrows on his face deepen._

 _He watches her with a hint of something smug and disdainful in his eyes and meets her stare with the sort of cruel superiority that one usually reserves for looking at rubbish or bugs. She narrows her eyes, her mouth curling into a feral snarl and almost growls. Seeing something in her expression, his eyes begin to glint with malice and his lips twitch upwards in a sadistic smirk._

" _The last of the great Lius, a helpless, broken child," he sneers, as if it were a joke, "the greatest dynasty in Earth Kingdom history, brought low in a single night."_

 _Her eyes widen and her mouth gapes and something within in her_ _ **snaps**_ _listening to him. The weeks of jeers and silence and_ pain _catch up to her all out once as the words burst from her mouth._

" _ **YOU**_ _ **FUCKING**_ _ **FILTH**_ _!" she screams, her eyes growing wild and her face contorting in nameless agony, "I'LL KILL YOU! ALL OF YOU! CUT OFF YOUR COCKS AND MAKE YOU_ EAT _THEM!" her voice hoarse and screechy. She howls like a thing possessed, the words barely intelligible as they spew forth and she writhes on the soldier's shoulder, regardless of the pain. "MONSTERS! MURDERERS! RAPISTS! MY FAMILY WERE WORTH_ A HUNDRED _OF YOU FUCKING CUNTS AND I'LL BURY YOU AND YOUR FILTHY, BOODSTAINED_ FUCKING _NATION AND_ LAUGH _AS YOU_ **SCREAM** _!"_

SMACK!

 _Her head is knocked to the side as the captain smacks her hard across the face, the metal ridges of his glove carving bloody lines in her stained skin. She turns back and snarls at him like an animal, her eyes wide and dark. She wants to claw at his throat, sink her nails into the soft skin there and taste the warmth of his blood as it covers her bruised skin and_ smile.

 _His face is stern now, cold steel and black iron; weathered flesh and toxic eyes and something inside Yusheng keeps screaming at him._

" _You will not speak to me like that, Mud!" he commands low and laced with threat, "all these men here are your betters, you are_ nothing _and you will always be nothing," he steps back and smirks, a predatory light in his eyes, "besides you should feel lucky, not every Earth Kingdom whore gets to feel Fire Nation cock, you're one of the blessed."_

 _She makes a sound like a wounded animal and tries to launch herself towards him with a wordless shriek of fury, scrabbling on the soldier's armour before someone knocks her out._

 _~~*8*~~_

 _Yusheng comes to sometime later bound in weighted iron chains and shoved in the back of a cell cart. It's dark and oppressive, just like her cell on the ship, and she curls in on herself and bites her bloody lip as she tries to force herself not to cry._

 _The tears flow anyway, pouring soundless down her face in uncontrollable rivers as she remembers the captain's words. She's_ **worthless** , _a used piece of Earth Kingdom trash with no family and no home. The screams in her head cry out in her mind as she buries her head further into her knees. She just wants her mummy: to hold her tight and nurse away the pain and her tears flow faster as she realises that she'll never have that again. The pain between her legs pulses, pushing the venom and toxins further through her flesh with every pound, like sludge, winding its way up to her heart._

 _The dim light of day shines down tauntingly through the bars above her head and she glares at it through the tears. That sun, that daylight is_ Fire Nation _daylight. It's as poisoned and hideous as everything else in this godsforsaken land; even the air feels wrong, clinging to her like a second skin, drowning her with every wet breath._

 _She's able to hear the people outside the cart as it weaves through the city, their happy, bright voices like screaming in her ears and she curses every one of them to the depths of hell and back. They are_ Fire Nation _voices,_ Fire Nation _laughter and joy, and such is a terrible thing, the stuff of Earth Kingdom nightmares: the sound of burning battlefields and smoking skin._

 _She doesn't know how long the journey takes, doesn't care to pay attention. They only thing that is present in her mind is the avalanche of her emotions and the lingering fear her fate. She's already decided they're not going to kill her, if they were going to they would have done it already, so she assumes she's to spend the rest of her life rotting in prison, kept apart and barred from the world._

 _She shivers all over from that thought, her delicate, bruised limbs shaking like autumn leaves and she squeezes her eyes tightly closed._

 _Yusheng can't face that. An eternity trapped in a cage in a foreign land as the world drifts by and she sits stagnant. Locked in with the rats and the thieves and the hopelessness of her situation with only her heartbeat for company. She'd rather_ die _than that and she buries clawed, tense fingers into the mess of her hair and digs blunt nails into her scalp. Her muscles are wound tight and her breaths come in short sharp gasps; she shakes as she listens to the distant laughter of the outside world._

 _The panic feels like a living thing under her skin, the fear and nausea alive and writhing like a thousand eels burrowing through her bones, their slick slime oiling up her body. It bursts from her suddenly in a desperate sob, a choked sound that escapes without her permission, and echoes strangely in the odd privacy of the cell cart._

 _It opens the flood gates and almost instantly she is sobbing uncontrollably._

 _All the pain, all the_ fear _and_ anger _and_ hurt _of the last few weeks erupts from her in an avalanche of repressed emotion. She cries great messy tears, the kind that hurt your stomach from the force of the sorrow and force your breath to stutter and start. Snot runs from her nose and the pale skin of her face grows red and blotchy as she digs her nails deeper into her head. She curls up into a ball, her knees pressed tight to her chest and her head tucked into her neck. She is a crying, weeping mess of a person but she doesn't care._

 _She lets herself cry for what she has lost. For her family and future and home. She cries for her parents, the softness of their smiles; for her aunts, uncles and cousins, the children who barely got a chance to live. She cries for herself, for the part of her that is lost forever: for her innocence and happiness and for the broken thing she has now become. She cries over her pain, her broken feet and burnt calves, the ripped, torn skin of her most private place and the shuddering void in her mind that she refuses to touch._

 _She weeps openly, loud and wounded; whining breaths pushing from her lungs in agonised gasps. She cries until she has no more tears to shed, cries until she feels faint, cries until she collapses to the floor in exhaustion._

 _Cries until she dries her tears and promises to cry no more._

 _~~*8*~~_

 _The rest of the journey passes without care. Yusheng sits straight and hard and forces her face into the frozen stoniness that she has seen her father adopt sometimes, forcing her expression to shutter and close and her eyes to grow hard like marble. She stares blankly at the wall in front of her, unseeing, as she works on her resolve to be stoic no matter her fate, to face it with all the dignity and pride of her noble lineage._

 _It's surprisingly easy, to lock up her fear, she finds that the rage in her heart is the hardest to control but everything else can be pushed behind a veil of indifference. It's hardly healthy, that she knows, but she doubts anyone will care how well adjusted she is._

 _The cart comes to a rickety stop and she assumes that they've reached their destination, she hears the driver leap down from his perch and walk off and then the muted mutter of deep voices as he converses with someone out of earshot. She continues to stare sightlessly at the wall and represses a flinch when she hears the metallic thud of boots moving back towards the cart._

 _The door is unlocked with a click and swings open, letting in the blinding light of the Fire Nation sun and she sees that the armoured driver has been joined by another soldier._

 _He is as intimidating as his companion, dressed in that awful black steel with that terrible white mask, but as she stares at them, she begins to notice the differences between the two. Her newest jailor's armour has more to it, it's more ornate and somehow more nightmarish: faint lines of gold snake their way around the plated edges of the steel like thin rivers of fire and flash red in the light. The spikes on his shoulder plates are more pronounced too, taller, sharper, and tipped in that same gold that looks like bloodstains in the sun._

 _Yusheng stares up at both from the shadows of the cart. Her eyes are a blank wall of stone and her face has settled into a careful blandness that shows nothing, but at the same time all too much._

 _The newer soldier makes a considering noise from underneath his mask as he analyses her, "This is her then?" he says, and she can almost see his eyebrows raised in disbelief and dismissal, "I was expecting a bit more than a battered runt."_

 _Something about the way he says it gets her back up and makes her want to snarl, but she represses the urge and settles for imagining how she would go about disembowelling him._

First she'd cut out his liver, or maybe his intestines…? His blood would look so pretty spilt out on the ground around him.

 _The driver snorts, "That's her alright, tiny thing, ain't she? Don't see why all this is fuss is being made over her, looks less impressive than some of the beggars down by the docks."_

" _Must be important though, that dress looks like silk and that's definitely gold in her hair," the other soldier shrugs. "Oh well," he sighs, "orders are to be obeyed." He then focuses in on her with such a force that she can feel it on her skin, "Out, Dirt-bitch!" he barks, and makes to grab at the chains binding her._

 _She beats him to it though and rises, slowly but steadily, to stand on her injured feet. The pain is excruciating and she fights the impulse to moan out loud at the sensation, but she stays strong and her mask barely cracks, even as it feels as though a thousand tiny needles are being shoved into her ankles. She maintains her blank expression as she walks carefully out of the cart and into the sun._

 _She turns around and has to hold in a gasp as she sees where they are._

 _Her whole body grows cold because, this, this she hadn't considered._

 _A huge structure soars up in front of her, pointing up to the sky in a towering wall of looming threat; if she had ever imagined the entrance to Hell, this would be it._

 _The building is black, a void colour that flashes like volcanic glass when the light hits and radiates pure heat like an open furnace. It shines: flickering and biting in the boiling sun like wild flames and sucking in the warmth in the shade. The base is stone, ornate white granite, sharp with crystals and carved into scenes of rapture and war while the three wings are wreathed by vicious golden daggers. It's ornate, grotesquely so, dripping in gold the way a whore drips for a customer: obscene and stinking of excess._

 _The Fire Nation royal palace._

 _Yusheng sees it and wants to crawl back inside the cell-cart and stay there. This place is the heart of Fire Nation power, the brain at the centre of the entire war and the home of the most terrible men in recent history. She feels the cold bite of instinctual terror staring up at the palace: feels her lungs grow tight and sparks shoot through her limbs._

 _Her brain races through thoughts rapid fire, she can think of no reason why she would be brought here. Without the might and power of her family_ (dead and burnt and **screaming** ) _she is essentially useless: she is too young to control her family's spy network, too_ female _to hold much political clout outside of marriage at her age. She has nothing to offer the Fire Nation ruling class._

 _And that makes her being here all the more terrifying._

 _The guard holding her chains yanks them forward, causing her to stumble over her aching feet, "Move it, Runt! We don't have all day!" he growls from under his mask._

 _She barely holds in an agonised hiss of pain and forces her features to still as her face threatens to erupt into a feral snarl. She summons up all the false, bland stoicism she can muster and plasters it all over her face and follows him carefully toward what appears to be a side entrance._

 _As she walks, to distract herself from the pain, she compares this palace to the one in Ba Sing Se. The Palace of the Endless Earth is an ancient thing, a massive, sprawling city within itself that dates all the way back to the first kings of the northern provinces. It's old, older than the unified Earth Kingdom and deep in its catacombs are the reminders of darker days, the bloodier eras of warlords and feuding states._

 _Yusheng grew up there, exploring the endless passages and auxiliary halls; ducking in and out of administrative centres and ancient shrines while her father worked and her mother socialised. It was her playground, her huge, thousand-year-old playground and held the weight of generations upon generations of her ancestors._

 _Because, see, the Liu's_ built _Ba Sing Se, they made it. When the Kings of Omashu and the western provinces betrayed her family, betrayed centuries of loyalty and dirty work in their names', the Liu's fought back. They shifted their entire power base north, threw the weight of their name and the insidious complexity of their spy networks behind an impressionable young lord from a backwater nowhere and within two centuries the city was the heart of a sprawling empire._

 _Within two centuries the kings of Ba Sing Se commanded the fiercest armies and the most prestigious court on the continent. The heart of their territory was surrounded by gargantuan walls pulled from the rock by earthbending masters and their king was a living god._

 _And Omashu? Well, that became a forgotten state, a relic with a powerless king and a weak government that controlled nothing but the hill it sat on._

 _And oh, wouldn't it be glorious if she could do the same here? Pull down the Fire Nation and its garish palace with nothing but her wits and her pain and watch as it withered and died._

 _But such thoughts are useless at the moment, with the towering black façade of the palace in front of her and a city of her enemies behind. She is powerless here._

 _She walks, holding back whimpers and moans of pain as her weight rests on her feet and follows slowly behind the guard as he leads her to the side entrance. The door is red, a tall thing wreathed in flames like a fiery portal and guarded by two armoured men with cruel looking pikes. Her guard exchanges a nod with the one on the right and the two of them walk forward to grasp heavy brass handles and pull. The door opens with a near inaudible groan, less of rust and more of age and the palace within opens up._

 _Yusheng enters, her head held down in what could be misconstrued as weakness or fear, but is really a desire not to see the palace as she heads inside. She fears that if she looks up and sees it, she will lose all nerve, the terror and desperation coiling in her gut will crack through her mask and all anyone will see is a weak, helpless girl. That, she knows, is to be avoided at all costs._

(A trained predator can _smell_ fear, _Aunt Lanfen whispers,_ they can scent the sickly ooze of it from your pores and _feel_ the race of your heart.

Never let them smell your fear, Little Gem, never let them taste your heart.)

 _The thought of her aunts and their advice and smiles sends raw, aching sadness throbbing through her, a physical thing stealing her breath. She grieves still, the pain merely shuttered as their melted faces haunt her behind her eyes. What Yusheng wouldn't give to have them beside her now, muttering words of wisdom and guiding her with their eyes. But she is alone. Totally isolated in a foreign land with hostile foreign people._

 _And she aches._

 _Mourning and sorrow curl in her gut and stab at her limbs like a thousand pinpricks and she holds her head lower and closes her eyes against it._

 _She walks into the palace and suddenly all is cool and dark. The air is still wet here, but the kind of moistness where it is impossible to tell if it is truly water or simply the cold and the gloom surrounds her like a mist. It is like walking into the lair of a beast, and as the door behind her closes with an empty thud, she feels truly trapped._

 _She looks up then, for there is nowhere else to go now but forward, she is unable to run even if she were physically able, and looks upon her cage._

Dark, _she thinks,_ dark and silent _._

 _The palace is dim and shadowed inside; a long dark corridor with a cavernous ceiling and only a few flickering torches to light the way. It has the same ominously ostentatious feel as the outside, dragons of blood-gold writhing up the walls and staring down with dead eyes. She thinks of tiger-hornets, brightly coloured flashes brimming with toxic viciousness and poisonous pain and fears the sting of this place. The chink of her chains echoes in the silence: a deathly, heavy thing that weighs down the air around her with more than creeping tension; each step makes her flinch with the metallic sound._

 _It feels like a hunter the moment before it strikes, the pause before an explosion._

 _She follows the guard down the hall, studiously ignoring the ruby eyes of fire sprites that stare down at her from the walls and the silent condemnation in their inanimate features. Yusheng wonders how anyone could call this place home, the entire thing seems to be designed with the express purpose of making visitors uncomfortable. Long and forbidding halls, deep dark silences and the echo of your own heartbeat in your ears._

 _The Fire Nation royal palace is nothing like its Earth Kingdom counterpart._

 _The palace of Ba Sing Se is bright and airy, more a series of interconnected structures than a single building. The symmetry of the place is comforting, the pale greens and yellows golds of the walls open and young despite the sheer age around them. There are brilliant lacquer screens of beautiful women and flowers in bloom and an ancient shrine to Yuhuang, the Jade Emperor, carved out of the purest of jade crystals._

 _Only the area nearest to the throne is intimidating to the extent of the Fire Nation Palace, great empty passages, massive in size and fearsome in their silence. A geometric maze of rooms and dead ends crowned by a cavernous throne room. In those rooms and halls, the gods of her people watch from high and the Dai Li creep through the shadows._

 _But every part of this palace feels as eerily anticipatory as the last. Gloomy and cool and tense. It makes her heart thud in her ears and her fingers tingle with distant terror, makes the skin on her body crawl and the hairs on her neck stand on edge. Her stomach swoops with the sticky feeling of fear and she feels like a cornered animal._

 _The halls become more ornate as they go, covered almost floor to ceiling in ruby veins and golden flames. Yusheng thinks, briefly, that the whole fire thing is taken way too seriously here, there is not a single wall or ceiling not decorated in some way by rings of fire or dancing dragons. It would be laughable if it were not so chilling; it feels like every other part of their culture; every other faucet of their history has been erased to leave only this._

 _There is a sense of the surreal as she walks through the halls. The constant blinding agony of her feet and the toxic throb between her legs (DON'T THINK ABOUT IT DONTTHINKABOUTIT_ _ **STOP!**_ _) makes the world feel disconnected and empty, makes the edges of her vision blurry and colourless. Her ankles hurt_ so much _now that it is only by sheer willpower alone that she is still standing. There is real fear now, fear that she has done permanent and irrevocable damage to her bones and such is a weakness she can't afford._

 _They blessedly, eventually, come to a stop in front of the most extravagant pair of doors she has ever seen. Huge and black, a shined obsidian metal covered in intricate patterns of thin gold. The frame is lacquered and emblazed with rubies and massive twisting dragons meet and breathe flames over arches of gold and black at the top. Spirits and gods spin and snarl in the shadows of bonfires across the doors and warriors cry in victorious ecstasy._

 _Yusheng stares up at them, the world hazy with pain, and sees waste. They are garish and terrifying and do their job quite well, but all she can see looking at them is filth and blood money and starving children._

 _The doors open before her and the guard as if by magic and the blast of pure heat that hits her is instantaneous._

(And suddenly it is three weeks ago and an explosion bursts across her body and the deadweight of another covers her and the world is _screamingscreamingscreaming._ All around her are the dead and the dying and the green walls are red with flames and blood and the world _burns._ The smoke is choking her lungs and she can't breathe she can't breathe)

 _She's not breathing._

 _The world rights itself around her in shocks of agony and crimson colour and Yusheng takes deep, gasping breaths as precious air enters her lungs. She has bent over, clutching at her centre as if she's been punched (and she has in a way) and staring blindly at the polished ebony slats of the floors. She can smell the scent of flames in the air and feel the heat as it caresses her skin with cruel fingers and struggles_ struggles _against the yawning abyss of terror, panic and pain the creeps through her mind._

 _She can see it all again, so clearly. Broken burnt bodies, bubbling blistered skin, melted silk, hellfire glow, burning hair and blackened flesh. The screams too, are there (_ and the whimpers and the quiet moans of complete agony, the roar of fire in her ears). _There is the sweet smell of funeral pyres, the crackling odour heated hair follicles and she can taste it all on her tongue. The only colour that exists now is red, plasma scarlet and crushed fire lilies and she looks down and_

Yusheng. Run.

 _But she can't. Not now, not here. She is in the heart of the devil's den, the monstrous soul of murderers and maniacs and her feet are broken and she is_ poisoned _and alone,_ so alone _. Because they're all dead, aren't they?_ _ **They're all dead.**_ _She has nothing and now in this house of secrets and lies the guards stare at her with their bone white inhuman faces and the silence echoes in her mind like the silence of the void and oh Spirits,_ **they're dead and she's** _ **ruined**_ **.**

 _She digs her fingers in her ribs, so hard her broken nails bite deep into her skin and this is too much pain for a twelve-year-old, too much agonising weight. The loneliness and the hurt and the toxins in her veins and she can't escape. Trapped. Nowhere to run._

 **And they're all dead**.

 _It clouds her mind and obscures her senses, it blurs images and colours together in a mutated wave of metamorphic shapes. Her breaths are harsh in her ears and in the silence and she wants to cry, wants to vomit, but she holds it back. Because she promised herself no more tears and to be_ strong.

 _She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and_

 _Over._

 _It has only been ten seconds._

 _She looks up and summons that bland, blank mask and enters the room._

 _At the end of the room there is a wall of fire, it burns white flashes on her eyelids, it stands tall and roars. The flames cast a terrible twilight glow in the gloom and flicker in the eyes of the golden dragons that coil down the pillars lining the hall. The ceiling is arched and covered with yet more gold and the floor is gleaming, mirrorlike wood._

 _At the end, behind that wall of flames, is a massive aureate screen in the centre of which sits the gaping maw of a dragon. A monstrous, serpentine beast that's body winds in knots across the back wall and its mouth opens up as if to breathe the flames. At the centre is a curious structure, a small pavilion crowned it golden flames: in it, sits the shadow of a person._

 _And Yusheng knows where this is._

 _She can feel her limbs twitch; her eyes grow wide and the urge to throw up returns. Because why is she_ here. _She is not nearly important enough for this, for this room and that man. Her Liu family name means nothing in the Fire Nation, less than nothing now that she is the last and she has nothing to offer._

 _She shudders hot and cold all over and the room fades out focus_

 _But no._

 _She can't._

(Never let them smell your fear, Little Gem, never let them taste your heart.)

 _Her guard has obviously grown impatient with her and sharply yanks on her chains, causing her to stumble forward and onto her shattered feet. The world blacks around her for a moment and she bites her tongue to keep in a scream: taste blood in her mouth and down her throat._

 _She moves, slowly and carefully, throws her shoulders back and holds her head high, because if she's going to do this, she's doing it with all the pride and honour of her heritage, of her people, of the world she's lost._

 _When she reaches the wall of flames she stops and stares right at it; her guard walks towards her, his boots quietly loud and pushes her to the ground, pushes her until her head is on the floor and she kneels in supplication in front of a monster._

 _And she_ _ **hates.**_

 _There is a blinding fury in her at this, at being forced to kowtow to this...this…_ _ **thing.**_ _It momentarily overrides the fear and pain and she wants to snarl and hiss, to rip of the guard's mask and tear out his eyes._

 _But then, a voice._

" _So, this…is the last of the Liu's."_

 _It comes from behind the flames, soft despite the roar of the fire. Silky smooth and deadly. She_ knows _voices like that, knows them intimately, knows them well. It is the voice of a politician, the voice of a man who holds all the cards, a man who expects to be obeyed. It is serpentine and quiet, poisonous and low; a moose-lion stalking, a wolf-bat about to strike. It is the voice her father and uncles used at court, the voice her grandfather used to the old king, it means cleverness and ruthlessness: knives in the spine._

 _But his is ice and lightening, cold and precise, empty in a way that her father's never was._

" _Yes, my Lord," the guard answers. He is kneeling on the floor a few paces in front of her, head bent in deference and voice reverentially soft._

" _Hmm," comes the voice, "I expected…_ more. _"_

 _And how dare he? How dare he! How dare he judge her when he is far more worthy of being judged. Her lips curl and her brows pull together in disgusted fury, facing the floor where no one else can see._

" _Look at me, Girl," the voice commands._

 _And no. She refuses, she refuses to give this_ _ **monster**_ _the satisfaction of seeing the revulsion and pain in her eyes. She stubbornly remains prostrate in front of the fire, no matter the position grates on her._

 _He chuckles, low and humourless, "Still some defiance then? Don't worry, that will fade with time." There is a moment of silence before he speaks again, "You have put me in a strange position, Girl. I cannot kill you, you are a Liu and your line means that one day you could be…useful, but at the same time I have no wish to shelter bedraggled Earth Kingdom orphans in my house," he pauses again, "sends the wrong message, you see."_

 _And Yusheng does see, the Fire Lord, taking in the last of a powerful Earth Kingdom family? Protecting a child of, what is arguably, one of his greater opponents? No. He cannot do that. It would make him appear merciful, and of course, that is one thing the Fire Lord isn't._

 _His voice is harsh and empty, "Liu women are supposed to be some of the most beautiful in the Earth Kingdom." He speaks to the guard now and not to her, "Take her away and get her cleaned and seen to, I won't house cripples, and maybe Madam Azari can find some use for her."_

 _And so it begins._


	6. Chapter 6

**Wildfire**

Chapter 6

 **A/N: I'm back! Wow aren't you guys nice! I love you all so much you brilliant paragons of society, you say such lovely things! Annnnyway, been a while, not as long as last time but long enough, and I managed to find the inspiration to write this and get halfway through the next chapter too, thanks for the encouragement! This is set in Yusheng/Zarin's present, so will the next few chapters be, which I know you wanted. I try my best to handle her sensitive mental state as best I can and I hope it fits, I've answered a few of your comments at the bottom if you wanna read, don't be afraid of commenting, I love it! (Apologies for typos/errors/etc. I check myself so stuff is missed)**

 **Disclaimer: ATLA is not mine**

* * *

The sun is shining when Yusheng wakes. Its pale, bright rays are dyed vermilion by the thin orange linen covering the small window opposite her sleeping mat and the soft warmth plays over her face. The air is dry and cool, not the heated stickiness that seem to pervade the Fire Nation whatever the season and smells faintly of winter flowers and the sea.

She opens her eyes slowly, a leaden weight thick like molasses sliding over her limbs and pulling at her mind. The light is bright on her face, tinted as it is, and she squints her eyes against it.

She feels exhausted, completely and utterly drained. A steady throb beats behind her skull and it clouds her fuzzy, sleep-heavy thoughts with muddy pulsing colours and a rhythm that pounds in time with her heart. She can't have had much sleep; her limbs are aching and her hair is still slightly damp from her bath. She thinks she must have returned to the harem some hours after midnight and the time that she'd lain awake plotting and scheming hasn't done her any favours.

She stretches her body out and yawns, her mouth gaping open as her bones creak with the effort, the stiffness slipping slowly from her limbs. She pulls herself up, gracefully despite her weariness, for if there's one lesson from her childhood that has served her equally well here it is to always look her best, no matter how she feels. Her hair feels heavy on her head, running down her back in a silken river and she runs a hand through its length, wincing a little as her fingers snag in the knots. She sits there for a moment in silence, face tilted toward the light as she breathes in the clean air and wakes.

She makes a pretty picture, she knows; the soft orange glow spilling over her naked skin; her hair: thick and dark and long. She can almost see it now _The Whore Awakens,_ hung up in some rich man's house and she allows herself a small sardonic smile. It looks almost soft in the shadows of her face.

It is early. The sun is weak yet and the world is quiet.

It creates a small mirage of peace here within her prison; the gentle quiet of the morning and clean feel of the air and she supposes that these rare moments of stillness are the closest she ever comes to being content. There is a hazy quality to the morning -although that might be the tiredness speaking - a gauzy, chiffon texture threaded through with ribbons of peach and pale yellow.

She thinks back to last night and feels the smile on her face turn to something less mocking and more real. The prince's kiss remains on her mind, the youthful passion and innocence clear enough in her memory that it makes her tryst with Vathak seem pale and watery; makes the oil in her veins feel just slightly thinner.

It was a good kiss, not so much in technique, she thinks it must've been his first _(and isn't that satisfying?),_ but in depth and emotion. All that restrained violence and feeling, it makes her shiver a little at the deliciousness of what is to come. It makes her feel something that is vaguely akin to excitement and hasn't it been so long since she's had cause to be excited about anything? She feels a little giddy, a little drunk on her own success and ambition, and her smile stretches into a wide grin, toothy and sharp.

There is a confidence to her in the calm of the morning, despite her exhaustion and the disgust that mirrors the soreness between her thighs, and she feels oddly invigorated.

The weakness of the light tells her that the sun has only just risen and from that alone she knows a good portion of the palace is awake. Firebenders rise with the sun after all and servants must wake before the nobles. But this is the morning after a festival; chances are that those of the court are still abed, languishing their mornings away in nests of crimson silk as they nurse their hangovers and blissfully wearied bodies.

It gives her a rare opportunity, she thinks, to wander without being noticed, to walk off her heavy eyes and lassitude in the pale morning sun. Her almost-peace makes her feel slightly reckless, an odd feeling of invincibility that lures her away from the dim halls of the harem and into the maze of the palace.

She stands slowly, quietly in the shared space of the harem, and pulls on a pair of loose trousers and a tunic from the folded pile of clothes by the foot of her bed and runs a comb through her hair until it's smooth. The other whores are sleeping, she can see their shadowed forms through the thin divides that separate their sleeping spaces and she is pleased that she will not be forced to interact with any of them. Before she leaves though, she reaches down to the small drawstring bag that she keeps by her pillow and pulls out a handful of wild carrot seeds, small and innocuous, she shoves them into her mouth and chews, grimacing at the bitter flavour.

The last thing she wants is a pregnancy.

That's not to say though, that she never wants children. She is incredibly aware _(always aware, always hurting)_ that she is the last Liu and therefore it is her duty to carry on the family line. She'll be damned if a line as ancient and prestigious as hers dies out on account of her and her own selfishness. She doesn't think her ancestors would ever forgive her.

 _(But the idea -the very notion- that the father of the next generation of Lius would be some piece-of-shit Fire Nation_ scum _sickens her to her very core. Makes her stomach twist and skin crawl in a way she thought she'd left behind. She thinks she'd rather_ die _.)_

With that attended to, she pulls back the linen screen that serves as a mimicry of a door to her sleeping area and steps out into the narrow hall that all the whore's bunks are along. She slips her feet into a pair of worn red slippers and glances around to make sure no one has seen her and follows the hall to the door.

The area of the palace containing the harem is not the most extravagant of places, but there is a certain garish decadence to it that she has leant to associate with the Fire Nation. The harem itself is not especially large, but within its limited space it manages to somehow feel almost revoltingly carnal and overwhelmingly constricting. There is the main entrance, where clients are met, and the room where they all gather before meeting those clients: a mess of scarlet and orange fabric (apparently meant to mimic the tents of the Si Wong people but fails so miserably its offensive) and walls that are covered with obscene images.

Then there are the private quarters: the baths (which are her favourite place in the entire palace), the corridor where they sleep, a small dining area for eating and a courtyard with a water pump for washing their clothes.

Whores don't get servants after all.

There are various anterooms here and there, mainly used for storage and the like, but all of it filled with so much of that fucking contemptable _red_ that she has to grit her teeth against the constant urge to scream and tear it all to pieces.

Not that it would do much more than earn her a space in one of the Fire Nation's prisons anyway.

She scowls to herself at the thought, one day, _one day_ , she will leave this place and never have to set her eyes on another strip of red silk again. One day she will throw anything that reminds her of this place on a pyre and laugh as it burns. But for now, for now, she grinds her teeth and clenches her fists and ignores the steady rumble of fury always sitting at the back of her mind.

She moves through the harem silently, her steps light and even as she slinks through the new-dawn shadows. She enjoys the silence, delights in the absence of the chittering, high-pitched voices of the other girls and the lack of Madam Azari's piercing yellow eyes. Solitude is such a rare thing for her these days, for all that she is avoided and avoids in turn, it always seems as though there is someone around, even if it is just the eerie mocking eyes of the faces that adorn the walls. She is always alone in a crowd, and such is a poor substitute for true aloneness.

She never used to be such a solitary creature, and it is a part of her she mourns the existence of as much as anything else. She was such a lively child once, growing up in an expansive family with many cousins: precocious and chatty, the sort of child adults titter over and praise. She misses that part of herself, is unfathomably angry at the Fire Nation for killing it along with her family and her dreams, and knows it lies buried in that forest.

She somehow manages to retain her content confidence as she sneaks out of the harem and into the main palace, stepping into the dark halls. Night and day, summer and winter never seem to exist in the palace. The corridors of the main bulk of the building are perpetually cold and gloomy; forever lit by ever-burning lamps, like will-o-wisps leading the unwary to their doom.

Her years of traversing these halls on the arm of one client or another has made her fairly familiar with this area of the palace, but much of the palace is still a mystery to her as she has never had leave to wander its halls freely. She knows many of the passages and boltholes around this part, but the odd confidence she feels inspires her to walk further, to meander deeper and deeper through the shadowy corridors.

She moves soundlessly, quick and quiet, her soft slippers making no noise on the gleaming wooden floors. She revels in the silence of the early morning, the subdued anticipatory deadness of the dawn. The sounds of servants scurrying by are distant in her ears and she hides in the shadows of corners and sculptures to avoid being seen. She finds it curiously thrilling, to dart and wander through the heart of what is ostensibly enemy territory unseen and unnoticed: a vengeful ghost prowling the halls. She challenges herself to push it further, her hiding places become more daring and she waits longer before concealing herself and smiles daggered and catlike in the dark.

It feels almost like a hunt.

It heightens her mood, this game of hers, makes her feel powerful in a way that she hasn't in a long time. Oh, she has had power in her beauty, in her sexuality and the raw sensual energy she has leant to exude, but not in the primal way of a predator, not for a long time. She takes a risk, one inspired by this odd jovial mood of hers and begins to secretly follow the servants as they work. Each one for a few minutes, unseen in the gloom, before switching to another.

She follows them deeper and deeper into the dark, winding halls of the palace, further in than she has ever been before. Diving into the servant's passages after them and avoiding the guards. There is a dangerous sort of thrill about it, she knows that the punishment would be harsh if she is caught but somehow she cannot find it in herself to care; she feels as though she deserves this, this playful fun, it harkens back to her days doing the same in the Palace of the Endless Earth, running through its circuitous halls as the Dai Li watched on from the shadows.

The old Earth King had loved children, as much as he'd only been able to produce one with his queen, and so had encouraged his advisors to bring theirs to the palace, claiming he enjoyed the sound of darting feet and childish laughter in the halls. She'd spent much of her childhood there, the ancient buildings more of a home to her than the family lands to the west.

It's part of the reason she hates this place so much, part of the reason she'd felt so terribly betrayed when she'd seen the Dai Li that night. They'd been her protectors and invisible guardians for all her life up until then; the utter, aching _betrayal_ of them witnessing the darkest events her life and being _party_ to them was more shattering than what the Fire Nation did. She could've expected it from the Fire Nation, but not the Dai Li, and for that reason that she hates them more than she ever could her captors here.

Nobody betrays the Liu's and gets away with it.

While her rage at the Fire Nation is a weighted heavy thing, a fractured crystal wall of fury and loathing, her hate for the Dai Li is almost primal: illogical in its animalistic intensity and dark in its bloody desires. And once she has dealt with this place she will hunt them down like the filth they are.

The servant she is following takes a sharp turn to the left out of the passages and she gasps.

The servant continues on his way and she is left staring at the sight in front of her.

Now this, this is a place that she has never been before and she cannot help but be in awe of it. The room is huge and cavernous -it must take up the entire height of the palace- and grand beyond measure. Much of the space is empty, full of vacant echoing air sitting still between the polished wooden floors and the domed ceiling: but it is an emptiness of _presence_ , one that feels full and terrifying despite the absence of _things_ ; all the more glaring in comparison to the rest of the palace.

The ceiling is a work of art that even she cannot deny: layers upon layers of metal scales, gold, copper and blackened iron that flicker in the light of the torches. Arranged piece by piece spiralling up towards the zenith, seemingly random in their positioning but placed in such a way that they writhe together in the light like living flames, the colours mixing and warping, drawing the eye ever deeper into the twisted tongues of imagined heat.

But it is the centre-back of the room (if one could even callthis space a _room_ ) that has her entranced, has her walking silently and spellbound further in, regardless of the risk.

A huge statue, an enormous looming idol of red agate that stands twenty metres from foot to crown and stares out with glaring ruby eyes. It is the largest of its kind she has ever seen. The crystal is cut in swooping, angry lines, fluid and powerful and almost liquid but not: it is everything that is fire and it _glows,_ shrouded and enshrined in an ethereal witchlight that scalds the skin.

The statue itself is a god, riding astride a strange, four-legged hooved beast with cruel-looking curved horns. The god's three heads stare in every direction, crowned by an immense halo of flames, and its four arms stretch out, wide and encircling, each palm cradling its own fire.

Agni observes his domain.

Around and behind the statue, golden lotus petals unfurl in layers of gleaming metal, like an enormous burning flower, or a rising sun. Each shined surface etched with tiny patterns and scenes of exquisite detail, every one more brilliant than the last.

There is more wealth in this one room than there is in entire _cities_ , the statue alone could feed a province. It's disgusting: a beautiful, _wasteful_ expression of religious devotion that she doubts anyone in this entire palace feels. She cannot help but walk closer to it though, bewitched by the burning in its empty crystal eyes and the shining glowing mirror of its form.

 _This was a collaboration_ _piece_ , she thinks, looking at its curves and lines, _a work of art produced by both fire and earth alike_. Agate does not naturally form this big, nor this perfect, and she sees within her mind the weeks that earthbenders and firebenders toiled together in harmony to form such a perfect stone. Fire to create the conditions, Earth to manipulate the minerals needed for it to form.

She stares at her reflection in the glass of its surface, a relic of a lost world.

She sees herself in the statue, the Earth that makes up who she is and the Fire that forced her into what she has become. She smiles without humour and her reflection does the same, finding it oddly ironic that she has found metaphors and mirrors in a statue of the fire god.

The room, which must be a shrine of some sort, is strangely empty. No servants, no guards, no sages or priests, no believers come to pray. She finds herself alone with this colossus and the odd sentiment it evokes.

Her earlier content confidence is gone, it coils in the air now with the smoke from the statue's flames: wispy, elusive and vanishing. Instead she is thoughtful, considering, her green eyes are narrowed in contemplation and her pale face smooth in thought. There is no viciousness here (in the strange morning silence; in the shadow of a god) just odd open questions, half-written ideas with no meaning and cyclic riddles that dance in her brain.

She cranes her head back and meets the underside of the middle head's glittering eyes; her hair paints an oil spill down her back. She thinks back to the prince's comments on the lost gods of the Fire Nation, those ancient deities that have died with their flocks and feels suddenly and irrationally furious. She jerks away from the statue abruptly, the poison returning to her eyes and her features sharpen and twist. She can feel the disgust and wrath creeping back through her veins, the interlocking torrent of hate/pain that she carries in her heart oozing to the forefront and her hands clench and nails bite and she pulls herself under control.

She gives the statue one venomous look before turning away.

 _How many corpses is your throne built on?_

She can no longer _stand_ to be in this room with that _**thing**_. She recognises it now for what it is, its burning-laughing eyes, the way that, when looked at from a certain angle, the three mouths fuse together in a ghastly cheshire-grin. It's a symbol, as nearly all things are here, a symbol of Fire Nation dominance and power, of how they crush their enemies, subjugate their foes into mere memory and rise from the ashes of their pyres.

Agni stands glorious and laughing on the bodies of his fellow gods and the Fire Nation does the same to its fellow nations.

The image of earthbenders and firebenders corrects itself in her mind. There are whips there now. And chains. Cuts seeping blood and puss and bruises that purple to complement the smear of soot on worn bodies. Hair forcibly shorn short as a mark of dishonour and bones bowed and bent from manual labour.

Slaves built that statue now: broken and beaten and oppressed. Slaves with the hope driven out of their green eyes and the feel of solid Earth Kingdom ground a distant, painful loss.

She can feel the weight of the statue's eyes on her back as she stalks, quick and efficient from the room, feel the pressure of it presence and the heavy air in between. But she tastes smoke in her lungs and cannot stay in this room any longer.

Back in the servants passages she takes a moment to calm, braces both hands on the solid surface of the wall and rests her throbbing head between them as she breathes in and out. The surface is cool against her skin and she curls her hands into fists and feels the tendons pull taut as her skin flushes white. She hates how any beauty she finds here is bloodstained in some way, as if any spark of pleasure, any fleeting lightening of the world must be soaked in, and dripping, crimson.

She shudders and closes her eyes as flashes of distant fading screams echo in her skull. Moments frozen in time that she will carry forever even as her memory inevitably fades.

 _Spirits_ she wants this place to burn. In the Si Wong desert there is an ancient stone tablet with the codes of a lost world inscribed on its surface, she had to study it with Earth Kingdom law when she was young, she recalls it now:

 _If a man destroy the eye of another man, they shall destroy his eye. If one break a man's bone, they shall break his bone._

She will pluck out all their eyes and snap all their bones before she is done.

She sighs, a sibilant whisper of breath that hisses in the silent corridor and straightens up, the tense curl of her hands relaxing as she stretches out her fingers, her filed pointed nails skewering the air. She should go back now, she knows, before she is found. Her prior good mood is but a fading blur now and her rationality has returned, _nothing gold can stay_.

Right now though, she cannot stand the idea of going back to that musky prison with its linen bars; the redredred that covers every wall and the empty eyes of its inhabitants. The very idea horrifies and she so desperately wishes to be alone.

She scratches her nails against the thin fabric of her trousers in a nervous gesture that she had forced herself to be rid of long ago and feels the muted slide of them on her skin. Her pelvis aches in a way that is unmistakeable and she knows that now she is alive again, she cannot be left alone with this pain and her thoughts, not now that her defensive apathy is gone.

She eyes the dim dark of the servant's corridor and walks further into the shadow.

She wanders aimlessly now, with no clear direction and no desire to have one, she simply wants to walk until Agni's eyes no longer press on her and her heart calms.

The servant's passages are plain and barely lit, the walls are a black ash colour and the floor a cheap dark wood that creaks with each step. She takes care of how she steps on these floors and hides in the shadows cast by the torches that line the walls. There is no decoration, none of the ornate gaudiness that is the pattern here, there is no gold or dragons or laughing demons, just a dark maze of identical halls.

It is easy to get lost in here, the few times she has traversed these passages had taught her that, the servants who were tasked with leading her had always seemed to have an odd, almost unnatural understanding of how each hall linked together. Barely glancing around as they avoided looking at her and darted through the halls. She smirks darkly in remembrance as she trails her nails across the grey plaster, the servants never have been able to look at her, simultaneously both above and below her in status, and offended, no doubt, by what she is.

She walks mindlessly in the dark, there is barely anybody around in this section of the palace and although this strikes her as strange, she doesn't allow it to phase her. The passages grow narrower too, older and darker and smell faintly of incense, a not unpleasant mix of fire lilies and dragongrass that drifts past on a non-existent breeze. The aroma leads her onwards as she weaves by in the dark, sharply reminded for a second of the winding halls of Ba Sing Se. The same geometric circuitousness and quiet age. This must be an older section of the palace, one build by the Earth Kingdom all those years ago and the thought brings with it its own melancholy yearning, tinged with pain.

It isn't long until she reaches a dead end, finishing at a door. She could go back, but she still doesn't want to. She leans on it, presses her ear against the heavy wood and attempts to make out what is on the other side. There isn't much, but a faint _whoosh_ and roar, the sound of crackling flames and the _sssssh_ of sliding sand.

It would be stupid to go through the door; the faint rim of light tells her it leads outside and the sounds mean that there are people around. But she feels a sudden uncontrollable urge to feel the sunlight on her skin, the limpid touch of natural light before it becomes too harshand to get away from the suffocating chill of the palace.

She takes a moment to contemplate her next move, a month ago she never would've gotten this far without turning back, probably wouldn't have even left the harem at all, but something about the revived swirl of her mind pushes her forward. She is no longer content to sit by and _take it,_ to let men like Vathak _use_ her: she wants to take risks, live more and revel in the electric rush of adrenaline in her veins.

She twirls her finger on the wooden door, drawing the shape of the Earth Kingdom crest in the dust and smiles emptily, _her own little rebellion._

With that in mind, she carefully opens the door and steps out into the sun.

The light hits her eyes like daggers after being so long in the dark and mutated black blotches obscure her vision as she hisses in pain. She brings up a pale hand to cover her eyes and blinks rapidly to adjust. When her eyes no longer hurt, she lowers her hand to survey her surroundings.

She has come to a courtyard, almost like the one from last night but not quite, this one is functional rather than beautiful. And older. There is not a single part of this space that is Earth Kingdom inspired, not one part of the design that she recognises. And it's fascinating in its own way.

The courtyard is decently sized and ringed by a colonnade of coral arches, a shaded walkway of strange multi-lobed porticos decorated by repeating shapes and patterns. It's ornate and layered, but not in an obtrusive way, and she imagines that long ago it must have been painted: bright, vibrant colours that have long since faded with the heat and time.

The Fire Nation palace is a strange place, an amalgamation of dynasties and styles stretching back into the distant past. Its towering, layered structure and stone base are purely Fire Nation but the curving pagoda roofs and flat geometric shapes are all Earth Kingdom. The interior too, is more Earth Kingdom than not, but with that ostentatious, flashy flare: molten gold and jewels. It hurts to look at sometimes, a familiar stranger that should be green not red and dark where light should flourish.

But then there are places like this, different from everything else and older still -ancient by all accounts- remnants of the first palace built here and a culture that time forgot. Bizarre echoes of a past she has no right to and so distant that it fails to evoke the pain nearly everything else does.

But as she darts behind a faded peach pillar to hide from sight, it is not the architecture that takes her focus, but what is in the centre.

The centre of the courtyard is covered with sand: tiny, grainy granules the colour of bleached marrow and spewing dust when moved. On top of it dance five figures, men with pale torsos oiled with sweat and shining in the morning sun. Their muscles flex and curve as they move in sinuous, powerful spurts and from their hands and feet burst iridescent gouts of flame. The fire roars and crackles as it erupts into life in waves of shimmering heat that rocket across the baking sands. She can feel the shocks of it on her skin from behind her pillar. There is no smoke, for there is no material to burn, just pure ferocious energy and _power_.

She takes a deep breath as her vision blurs and her hands shake where they grip the plaster. _Please not now_ , she thinks feverishly as the hungry sound of fire growls in her ears and phantom scent of cooking meat hovers below her nose, _I can't do this now,_ she thinks as she squeezes her eyes shut. Her knees threaten to buckle as a pulse of heat hits her skin and sweat begins to bead on her flesh. The world starts to become hazy and fade as the colours darken and the sun fades. The air is blisteringly hot and the screams are loud around her: they scream for her, at her, to come back, to _run._ But there is nowhere to run, not now, not then, not ever.

She moans lowly, a pained broken sound as the firebenders grow louder and consuming in her mind. Her breath comes in pants, gasping, painful things as her heart pounds in her chest and her perception narrows. _She can't breatheSHECANTBREATHE!_ Her limbs are weak and shaking as her hands claw desperately at the pillar and she presses her head against it to ground her and weather the storm.

Her families' faces swim to the forefront and she gasps sharply as she sees their _meltingblisteringboiling_ skin and watches the agony in their jade eyes as they howl and screech.

She doesn't know how long this lasts but she grits her teeth against the _terrorfurypain_ that rushes over her like an avalanche, burying her and choking her in the dark.

She comes back to herself with a sharp inhale, as she always does, and the sun returns.

She _hates_ these fits, these episodes where she loses all sense of time and self and becomes lost in the pain. Her face is tight and furious, her eyes sharp and raging and she feels _**weak**_. She can't afford this, this vulnerability. It makes her frail and _pathetic_ ; feeble and soft and she wishes sometimes that she could just scream herself hoarse instead of chaining it all in the back of her head.

She takes a shaky breath as she forces herself to look back at the firebenders, pushes through the instinctive revulsion and panic she feels at the sight and scowls nastily at her own weakness. This is hardly the first time she's seen firebenders since she's been here, casual firebending is everywhere: from the servants lighting the torches to the artists that perform for the court, but she rarely gets to see it aggressively, which is probably what set her off.

She forces herself to pay attention, to look at the way they move, and for all that firebending is an evil, savage, destructive thing, there is something mesmerising about it.

It appears to be a sparring match, four men against one, and the difference in skill is blindingly obvious even to her untrained eyes. The man in the centre is a work of art, seamlessly moving from shape to shape as fire explodes from his body in a continuous routine of strikes. His moves are as elegant as they are aggressive, precise and powerful in a way that she has never seen before from any warrior. The other men are nowhere near as talented, and it shows, they look as clumsy as a lame ostrich-horse next to him.

He ducks as an arch of fire rushes toward him, slips beneath it and turns abruptly into spin kick that pulls a wave of flame from the air and into the two men advancing behind him. They are forced abort and duck as the heat roars over their heads. The man then punches rapid spurts of fire at the original attacker before vaulting into the air in a rolling jump that sends fire whipping across the courtyard and into all four men simultaneously.

Her eyes widen watching the spectacle, and while she hates firebending as a whole, the sheer artistry and pure athletic mastery shown is astounding. She has seen earthbending masters before, but this is a completely different beast: earthbending is grounded and still, the idea is to force your opponent to move rather than move yourself and one must be as firm as a mountain to succeed. Only the Dai Li do it differently, quick and light and hunting from the shadows, _traitorous_ _fucking_ _snakes._

But this is, _dare she say it?_ beautiful. Beautiful chaos and destruction, an artform, a dance.

She discretely moves along the pillars toward them to get a better look and…

 _Well, well, well_

A slow, satisfied, all together gluttonously content smile curls thick and dangerous at her lips. _Hasn't she chosen well?_ For there, at the centre, the extraordinary firebender she had been watching, is Prince Ozai.

Oh how _brilliant,_ how _sublime_.

He is magnificent as he moves, one with his element in a way that those lesser benders around him aren't. He embodies fire like this, all that terrible grace and madness, the contained passion she now personally knows is there, just below the surface. She feels the ghost of his lips on hers as she watches, the imprint of his hands on her waist in her hair.

His youthful body and muscles look delicious as they reflect the glow of the fire and she can't wait to translate the intense power of this dance into a _better,_ more _pleasurable_ one.

Chills run down her spine just thinking about it.

Her calculating green gaze runs the length of his body hungrily and she feels a little like a lecher, staring at him this way, but she scoffs and dismisses the thought almost immediately. She has a right, she thinks, to a little leering, the amount of times it's been done to her, the toxic feel of unwanted eyes on her skin.

He is pale in the sunlight, and his flowing black hair is pulled back into a high tail on his head and flicks out like a spine when he moves. Now that she is closer she can see the expressions on his face, see the raging in his golden, dragon eyes and the buried fury there as his fine features harden in concentration.

A bead of sweat runs from his neck, down his chest to his abdomen and she wants to follow its path with her tongue, wonders if he would shiver at the sensation, hopes to find out.

She forcefully ignores the way the sound of the flames and the heat makes her feel and refuses to have another episode while she is still shaky from the last. But still, every gust of flame causes the breath to catch in her throat.

Her little prince is so _powerful,_ so potent and brimming with life and passion. _Oh, she has_ **so** _chosen well_. Iroh cannot be like this; Azulon might as well have been dead in comparison to the passion his younger son shows and so easily moulded too! She sighs low and pleased, leaning into the pillar and crossing her arms to watch.

Prince Ozai masterfully triumphs over his opponents again and again in ever more complex and impressive ways. _How has nobody noticed this? He must be a prodigy!_ Azulon, she suspects must be _blind_ if he hadn't seen the potential here, or stupid, the grace with which Ozai moves as he firebends is spellbinding.

After a final bout, Ozai's voice rings out across the courtyard, calling a halt. The other four men immediately stop, panting with the exertion, and one even collapses to the ground with a groan.

Ozai stands in the centre, breathing heavily, but hardly as exhausted as his opponents, and surveys them all with a predatory, cruel gleam in his eyes as he sees them defeated at his feet. The bloodlust is almost tangible in the air then, and she can almost see the madness in his mind telling him to strike, but he reigns it in -barely.

 _Hmm,_ control, she thinks from her shaded hiding place, _needs definite work._

He gives each man a nod which seems to signal a dismissal, and the men press fist-to-palm and bow before scurrying off to wherever they need to be. She takes care to make sure none are headed her way and presses her back to the pillar to avoid being seen.

Ozai, alone in the centre of the court, raises his face to the sky and closes his eyes as the sun washes over his aristocratic features. He looks a little like a lizard, sunning himself on a rock then, and again she thinks of _dragons._

They are alone now, the two of them in this ancient courtyard just after dawn, nothing but the distant sound of winter birds in the air and the quiet dawn breeze. She congratulates herself on her good fortune before rearranging her features into something flirty and impressed, and steps out into the sun.

* * *

 **TheGreatDebator: I'm glad you get that anti-hero vibe, that's what I was going for, someone that you feel conflicted over rooting for because although they're the victim, they've become twisted too. I always like characters that are morally grey, I always feel as though there's more character development that can go on there rather than just the archetypal good/evil characters. Glad you're enjoying though!**

 **AngieB: I haven't actually read that, haven't really had time lately for much outside studying, but I'll give it a looksee, sounds like my kinda thing anyway, dark and angsty. Thanks for the rec!**

 **To the rest of you and your questions and comments: For story content, you'll have to wait and see how it turns out, I don't want to give anything away, but rest assured I have it planned out all the way to the end and hopefully I get around to it. Thank you for all your feedback, reviews are love, and until next time!**


	7. Chapter 7

**Wildfire**

Chapter 7

 **A/N: New chapter, I hope this is okay, this is the first time I've written anything vaguely physical so I hope it's fine. Same things as always, I check my own work, mistakes are probably there, but you know the drill. Enjoy!:)**

 **Disclaimer: ATLA isn't mine**

* * *

"That was rather impressive," Yusheng says as she saunters out from the shaded promenade, her eyes fixed on the prince.

Ozai startles violently but tries to cover it, whipping his head around to face her. His muscles stiffen as he unconsciously assumes a ready stance and she uses the moment to appreciate grace of his movements and trails her eyes obviously over the lines of his body.

 _Delicious,_ she thinks, _and especially for one so young._

Upon seeing her, the prince relaxes by a fraction and his high cheekbones flush a delightful pink as he takes in her wandering eyes. "Zarin," he says in polite acknowledgement, a courtesy drilled in from birth no doubt, but then his voice sharpens and takes a warier tone, "what are you doing here?" he asks as his golden eyes narrow in suspicion.

"Taking a walk," she replies airily with a secretive half-smile, continuing to creep closer to him, "it's a lovely morning." She carefully lets her eyes drift around the courtyard, watching closely for any movement to make sure they're alone. She's taking a risk here, if he calls the guards on her the consequences will be severe and she'd rather not be whipped or thrown in prison for this.

But… _sigh_ , some risks must be taken _._

Ozai continues to regard her with a cagey distrust even as she walks closer, it's evident in the slight purse of his lips and the dangerous light in his eyes, "How did you get here?" he questions, his smooth voice guarded and unsure, "this area is reserved for the royal family, it should be closed to everyone else," he says imperiously, the voice of someone who expects to be obeyed.

 _Is it?_ she thinks with interest, the information whirring around in her mind, _how very_ fascinating _._ On the surface though, she says none of this as she tilts her head coyly to the side and her green eyes meet his startlingly bright ones through her lashes. "The servant's passages, Highness," she says almost apologetically with a light shrug, "there's a hall that leads here."

She watches him with bated breath as he eyes her with a focused intensity that sends chills arcing across her skin; she can almost see the gears turning his mind as he evaluates whether to trust her. This is an important moment; it may well set the tone for the rest of their encounters, she stands still under the weight of his gaze and tries to look as non-threatening as possible.

It's like baiting a nervous animal, she muses, or an injured predator, one wrong move and you're eaten alive.

After a moment the prince breathes out a sigh and his whole body noticeably relaxes. His feet slide back together from the balanced position they had been in and his arms drop; he runs a nervous hand over his ponytail in a gesture she finds hopelessly endearing and tries to look serious. "Well, you shouldn't be here," he says in a voice that she supposes he must think is authoritative, but really only sounds young; she almost smiles at how adorable that is.

She quirks an eyebrow at him and steps closer so they almost touch. She is completely covered, unlike last night, but he's dressed for training and wears no shirt; she can see the very moment her proximity and his state of undress register on his face as it once again blooms a becoming peach. His eyes flick downwards from her eyes to her lips and he unconsciously runs his tongue over his own.

She can feel the heat radiating off his skin, the furnace that must burn in his core. She feels more satisfied than words can explain at his reaction to her, all those little primal signs of interest: the dilation of his pupils, the deepening of his breath, the twitch of his fingers as he tries to contain the instinctive urge to touch. It appeals to her pride as a woman, amuses her with how very _easy_ this is. That's not to say she expected it to be hard -she didn't- he is a teenage boy after all, but perhaps a little more challenging.

But no, she stares up at him with a beguiling smile and lowers her voice to a level that she knows is enthralling and murmurs, "Are you going to tell on me, Your Highness?"

His pupils and nostrils flare a little at the tone of her voice and she can almost _feel_ him struggle ( _isn't that just_ special?), "No," he says, taking an abrupt step back, trying to get himself under control, he grips the back of his neck and looks away, embarrassed, "you're not doing any harm."

She finds his nervous fluster utterly charming, she's caught him off guard, she can tell. Last night he had obviously gussied himself up a little; while he was anxious, he was hardly this bad. _Well,_ she supposes, _he_ is _trying to seduce an older woman,_ she smirks, _experience is a little intimidating._ She smiles to herself at the thought.

"Thank you, Your Highness," she replies with a deferential nod of her head and allows her gaze to linger over the lean strength of his body.

He fidgets a little under her eyes, but there is a spark of male pride in his gleaming irises that says her perusal of him is not unwelcome.

He clears his throat rather obviously as he tries for princely bearing, "So you thought the firebending was impressive then?" he asks, replying to her first statement.

Her smile stretches slowly into something sultry and almost indecent, "Oh _yes_ ," she purrs, smirking internally as he turns smug ( _oh this is_ too _easy!_ ), "it was rather magnificent, Your Highness, there were four of them and one of you and you beat them _every_ time." She stretches her voice over every word, curling her tongue around the sounds so they slide through the air like silk.

He tilts his nose up arrogantly and an air of self-importance forms around him, "Of course," he says with the inbuilt conceit of royalty, "I am the son of the Fire Lord, they are mere peasants and so they failed," he finishes with a cruel grin and she can hear something vicious and feral crawling beneath his skin as he speaks, the same bloodlust and madness from before.

She nearly sighs, _Later,_ she tells herself.

Instead she replies, "Indeed, that much was obvious," she acknowledges, her voice an alluring drawl, "you are clearly the superior firebender."

He looks so very self-satisfied at that and puffs his chest out a little like a proud hawk. But there is an odd layer of insecurity hanging around him, a bitter tang of uncertainty that speaks of knowing his own prowess, but being unfamiliar with others acknowledging it. She runs her eyes over his stance, _definitely overlooked_ , she thinks.

She takes another gamble. "Are you better than your brother?" she asks, all innocence and coquettish pouts.

He immediately goes rigid and his face returns to being cagey and closed, "Iroh? What has he got to do with anything? Have you spoken to him?" he demands, his voice tight and eyes burning.

He looks at her then with such passionate jealousy, such furious resentment and _anger_ that she almost wonders if she has pushed a little too far. The suspicion has returned to his handsome face and there is an edge of _betrayal_ there too in his fine features that somehow doesn't surprise her.

There's that _thirst_ again though. The thirst to prove himself: to be better and greater than his brother, to have his time in the sun. Such rabid ambition is a useful trait, but only when correctly directed and used.

"No," she replies, presenting an air of complete bafflement as she makes her face frown in confusion and concern, "I just wondered, Highness, you said that you were a better firebender because you were a prince, I was just wondering if the Crown Prince is the same."

Ozai's face contorts into something ugly at that and he snorts, "Of course," he spits with venom, "of course, everyone always wonders about Iroh. About his bending, about his victories, about his wife, about his son, _always Iroh_ ," the words spew from his mouth in a torrent of bitterness so strong she can almost taste it.

There is such bad blood between the brothers, she ponders if Prince Iroh knows just how much his younger brother resents him, speculates as to whether he even _cares_. But Prince Ozai isn't done yet.

"And now _you,_ " he hisses, and there's pain now, hidden in his eyes behind the rage, "now you want to know about Iroh too."

 _Undisciplined little idiot!_ she rails at him internally as he continues to bare his soul to her, if she were anyone else, she could ruin him with this. Honestly, you would think he was some sort of peasant the way he feels free to spout his fury! And to her, a near stranger! They have properly met, what? Once? _This too, will need to go_ , she thinks with sharp, analytical eyes, _if he is to do well at court._

But she knows that she has wandered into dangerous territory here, the sheer amount of poison in his words tells her that, and she knows she will have done irrevocable damage to her goals if she allows him to continue working himself up. She cuts him off, "Was I kissing Iroh last night?" she interrupts, taking a chance and slicing through his verbal barrage.

He pauses and stares at her with those dragon-like eyes of his and she can see the indignant rage at being spoken over mounting there, along with stirrings of confusion and embarrassment. He really isn't used to people choosing him, which is…. sad, in its own way. But before he can say something else, or shout at her, or demand she be executed, she speaks again, offering up a small prayer to the spirits that this works, "Was I kissing your brother last night?" she says, and for once her speech is completely plain and devoid of the flirty undertones it usually has.

He blushes again ( _he really is utterly darling when he does that_ ) but still there is that arrogant fury there that she has _dared_ interrupt him, "No, but…" he begins.

She decides to speak honestly then, he seems the type to appreciate that, "I am not interested in your brother," she says bluntly, her voice quick and cutting, "I never have been, Your Highness, nor will I ever be." She pauses and takes a breath as she gathers her thoughts, "I apologise for speaking to you in such a manner, My Prince, but I feel as though it must be said," she finishes, making sure to look as apologetic and unassuming as possible as she watches him warily.

Prince Ozai stares at her, shock plain in the slackness of his mouth and the stillness of his form. He looks frozen, like someone has just ripped the ground from beneath him. She feels a pang of sympathy for him in the depths of her stone-cold heart, her family had been political yes, but she'd never doubted that she'd been _loved_.

This palace is a toxic place, she realises, not just for her, but for everyone who walks through the door. Poisoning them from the inside out. It must be a terrible place to grow up.

The prince then seems to pull himself back from his shock and his features shutter. His eyes burn vermillion flame as they stare at her, she can see the malice and insanity but also the neglected child that wants to be seen. She almost feels bad for using him.

Almost, but not quite.

"I don't appreciate being spoken to like that by an Earth Kingdom _whore_ ," he says darkly as his gaze roves over her with the same single-minded focus she saw earlier when he was firebending.

Any sympathy she feels evaporates in that instant and a black rage rises up inside her and she nearly sneers at him and rakes her pointed nails down his exposed chest: to _scar_ those pretty muscles. _Fuck you_ , she snarls, _fuck you, you entitled little monster,_ she rages in the privacy of her mind _._ But smothers the feeling before it can reach her eyes.

"You're lucky I don't have you thrown in prison," he mutters nastily under his breath. His eyes narrow and he exhales roughly, "Did you mean that?" he asks tentatively, suspiciously.

She nearly rolls her eyes at him in exasperation, _does she have to spell it out?_ She decides a more _direct_ approach is necessary.

She closes the distance between them again, with her hand outstretched like one would before a cornered beast. He eyes her with excitement and distrust warring in his gaze. She presses her hand to the warm flesh of his chest, right over his heart, and feels the firebender heat roll off him in waves, it makes her shiver and she can smell the scent of soot and smoke and something completely _male_ this close.

She trails her fingers softly up his chest and feels skin pebble beneath her touch as her hand travels up over his elegant clavicles and pale neck to cup his face. She takes a deep breath and steps closer, placing her other hand wide over his abdomen; she feels his muscles clench at the touch. He breathes deeply, she can almost hear the thrumming of his heart and feels the pleasure well up inside her at his reactions. His eyes are blown wide with an innocent lust that she doesn't think he knows how to name and he swallows beneath her hand. All the _fierce_ intensity and emotion directed right at her.

It feels _delicious_ , she feels it scorch her soul all the way down to her dead heart. He isn't looking at her the way her clients do, as if she _owes_ them something, and she feels powerful in that instant: invincible, as if she could take on the world. It's nice to be genuinely wanted for a change, rather than used and tossed aside like rubbish.

" _Yes,"_ she exhales breathily, and this close her breath washes over his skin and makes him shiver, "why would I be interested in Prince Iroh when there's you?" she says, her eyes heavy-lidded and her smile sly. He's frozen in the moment, his eyes wide with want and disbelief. _Poor boy,_ she thinks with a pout, _you're just waiting for someone to snap you up._

She leans in close and cups the other side of his face, pulling his head down to rest against hers; he is pliable in her arms, like a doll or a toy and it's everything she could've asked for. "Do you know what I saw when I first looked at you?" she whispers, quietly like she's confiding a scandalous secret. He stares into her eyes with a quiet hope that is so very sad yet so very exquisite, like tragic Ba Sing Se opera, the gold liquid as it meets her piercing green. " _Fire,"_ she breathes and his breath catches, something intense and without a name there under his skin. "Fire," she continues, "blazing and untamed and powerful," she says, drawing him further in.

He looks at her like she speaks gospel, entranced by her words and she _loves it_. "You are fire, Prince Ozai," she says, weaving a spell with her words, he is helpless to resist, "everything fire is and could be. Creation, destruction, chaos and _power_." She has him now, she thinks with glee, and she raises her lips to his ear for the final hook, he gasps as her warm breath hits the sensitive skin, "Why the _fuck_ would I want Iroh," she whispers, "when I could have _you?_ "

She leans back and there is something raw and hot and _dangerous_ brewing in his gaze that matches the giddy thing in her chest. He's panting like a dying man and his eyes are a storm of rabid hope, disbelief and a wild, feral sort of glee edged with forbidding malevolence and _possession_ that she should fear but just draws her in more. This man, this _boy,_ is dangerous

And she wants to watch him burn.

Something in him snaps and she sees the moment it does, he lunges at her like a rabid animal and captures her lips in a sloppy, biting kiss that's savage and oh so very desperate.

She meets him in the middle, responding with her own ferocity and hate and pain and bites out a moan as his hands dive into her long hair with a roughness that sends a delicious pain skittering across her skull. He makes a sound in his throat at the noise and kisses her harder, with a passionate clumsiness that has no time for the finesse that she'd tried to teach him last night. She can't bring herself to care.

This is a primal meeting of violent, cruel creatures, of selfish beings who thrive in the dark and she nips at him and chases his tongue with her own. Their faces are crushed together and she pulls his even closer and arches into him. She wants to consume him in that moment, or him to consume her, to take all that fire and fury into her own being and let it blaze: to pour her poison and empty soul into him and let it burn to ash. There is a raw physicality here in this kiss and the one from last night that she has never felt before, a reciprocal meeting of earthly desires that crackles around them.

She wonders with what little brain power she can currently spare what someone would think if they saw them, feverishly attacking each other. Quickly, she realises she doesn't care.

" _Zarin,"_ he groans between kisses and the tone of his voice make she stomach swoop and between her legs tingle.

 _Yes,_ she thinks distractedly, _this._

He backs her up the few paces to the nearest pillar and presses up her up against it, his superior strength and height serving him well here as he forces her up against the coral plaster. She wraps her arms around his neck and digs her sharp nails into the flesh of his upper back where she can feel the muscles flexing beneath his skin. He hisses in response against her mouth and grabs her legs to wrap them around his waist.

She gasps as he presses himself into her, feeling just how much this arouses him and disengages her mouth from his to suck and kiss and bite at his throat, delighting in how he shudders at the new sensation. He buries his face into her own neck and just breathes in the scent of her skin, moaning lightly as she begins to move against him, " _Ozai,"_ she hisses into his skin and he almost growls.

His hands move to trail up her legs to her waist in a way that is both uncertain and sure, his position as a prince giving him the assurance to simply _take_ but his naivety making him uncertain as to what or how. But she doesn't care, his elegant, fire-scarred hands weave paths of heat over her covered flesh and ignite as they slip under her tunic to the cool skin of her midriff. She hisses at the shock of how warm his palms are, the churning blaze that she can feel just underneath.

She pulls his lips back to hers and locks them together once more, swallowing his moans and breathing in his sighs. They battle for dominance as his tongue slips against hers and into her mouth, passionate and explorative. He tastes like power and potential, like exotic spices and the hum in the air before a storm; she can't get enough of it.

She feels powerful and desired, drunk on Ozai's lust for her and the way he feels under her lips and hands. His skin is like silk, smooth and pure and untouched and it moves like water under her palms. His groans and gasps are the most intoxicating of symphonies, made even sweeter by the knowing that she is the first person to hear them and the strength of his body is solid and hard.

She wants to commit this moment to memory, so that when she is old and fat and contented she will remember how this moment was the beginning and the end; so she can recall how it felt to kiss someone so very desperate for _her_ years after she lets the last man touch her skin.

She adores his desperation, the honest lust in it and the desire to possess and claim. If she were anyone else, anywhere else, being the focus of such greedy hunger would terrify her, as it would have done if she had just been Yusheng Liu. But life has not been kind and she has seen the very worst of human nature, been privy to the dark manias that hide in people's souls and there are things far scarier than a conceited prince's lust. She has her own monsters, and if he wants to possess her then she will _own_ him.

The prince growls dangerously across their shared breath and pushes her further into the pillar. The rough plaster scratches at her back in distant, painful nicks but more prevalent is the stiffened line of him pressing firmly into the throbbing apex of her thighs. He is only young so it hasn't taken much to get him going, but for her, the heady power trip of their kiss turns her on far more than his hesitant demanding efforts ever could. She is high on her success and the physical feel of it against her body; drowning and burning in the potentiality of their actions. Anything is possible from here and she can almost see her stars aligning behind her eyes. She has control and a sense of dominance that after so long being dominated thrills.

As the prince begins to grow sloppier and his hands fumbling as they skate up towards her breasts, she acknowledges that now is probably the time to wind it down. As much as she would like to see where this goes -she has long since lost any shame she had- she doesn't think he would appreciate a clumsy coupling up against a wall for his first time.

 _Later_ , she tells herself as the possibilities swirl in her mind.

She loosens her grip on him gently and coaxes the kiss into something slower and tamer. Slowing him down steadily with her greater experience and dropping her legs back to the ground. What had begun as a rabid, furious struggle becomes something infinitely more tender and sweet.

 _A lover's kiss,_ she thinks with some shock, and this is quite a novelty for her.

Eventually, after a dozen more nipping, affectionate kisses they part and her eyes flutter open.

Their faces are close, barely an inch in between them as they stare deep into each other's eyes. Both of them are panting, breathy gasps that send their chests heaving, although his heavier than hers. There's a sort of dazed wildness in the way that he looks at her, a primordial instinct that seems to be just slightly closer to the skin in him than it is in most and she can see with utter clarity just how much he wants her.

She hopes that her expression is equally convincing.

He seems a little unsure about what to do now that the passion has faded, even a little embarrassed about what just happened, his age and inexperience starting to show. But still there is a ravenous madness behind the teenage boy, a dragon telling him to claim and hoard.

But despite that he jumps back abruptly and his cheeks flush scarlet as his trousers. He looks rather glorious, she thinks, appraising him, his lips are swollen and kiss-bitten, a becoming plumpness that she rather likes and his neck is lined with faint bite marks; the monster inside her purrs in contentment at the sight. He looks rather debauched, she thinks with a lecherous grin.

She supposes though that she must look no better, her hair is probably a mess and her clothing dishevelled. Her suspicions are confirmed when the prince's eyes trail over her and he blushes an even deeper red, even as his eyes look all kinds of satisfied. She rather enjoys this reaction, it's so very adorable and unlike any of the other men and women who have kissed her before, she finds it utterly precious that he's still young enough to have some shame.

He stammers out an apology, "I-I-I apologise. Zarin," he stutters, looking a little lost, "I shouldn't have assaulted you like that," he finishes, looking like he almost wants to bow, princely demeanour absent.

She almost laughs at him, _oh this is too cute._

She smiles though, both sultry and tender, and reaches up a hand to smooth her down her hair. His eyes follow her movements with a laser focus that she doesn't think he is aware of and she smirks internally. "Well I was hardly complaining, was I, Your Highness?" she says, quirking a brow in his direction.

His eyes darken a little as he thinks back on what just occurred and his voice dips rougher, deeper, "No, no you weren't," he says, his voice husky with desire. He eyes her intently for a few seconds, the lust simmering in his gaze before seeming to shake himself out of his trance. He straightens up suddenly, opting for courtly pose and clears his throat, the effect is rather ruined by how rumpled he still looks. "But still," he says, trying to sound serious, "I am a prince and the way I behaved last night and today was unacceptable. It is unbecoming for a man of my station to behave with such a lack of decorum."

She does laugh that time, although softer than she would have done if she were alone. Oh, the things she could tell him about _men of his station_ , it would make his poor virgin mind explode. "Your Highness," she replies, her voice lightly chiding even as she snorts incredulously inside, "as a prince you have more right to my body than almost anyone else in this palace," she says, referring back to her status as a palace whore, even as the words curl unpleasantly in her stomach. "And," she says, walking closer and placing an affectionate hand on his cheek, "I happen to like you a whole lot better than anyone else in the palace too."

He leans unconsciously into her hand and grins with satisfaction, "Well, it is only right, I suppose," he proclaims arrogantly, his golden eyes glittering, "I am a prince and therefore preferable to the other rabble," he sneers.

There is a sour, disgusted feeling in her gut when he says that, he doesn't even question _his_ right to _her_ body and although she was expecting it she still wants to slap him for it. Even after going on about assaulting her and inappropriate behaviour, he still fundamentally sees her as a _thing,_ an object he has a right to, even if he is too shy and innocent to claim it.

That will change though, she knows, with time she suspects she could get him to love her, and then where would he be?

"Did you mean it?" he says suddenly, repeating the same question he'd asked before

"Mean what?" she replies with a frown, having been lost momentarily in daydreams of the future.

He looks unexpectedly bashful again: yearning and insecure and young. "What you said about my brother and me. Did you mean it?"

 _Poor dear_ , she sniggers inside, _so desperate_. She sighs and slowly shifts her face into a soft smile, "Of course, Your Highness," she says gently, _lovingly_ , "I would not say it if it were not true."

His eyes blaze with victorious delight and vindication, as if everything who knew about _himself_ had just been confirmed. "Good," he breathes and with a burst of confidence, turns to kiss her palm, " _good._ "

She simply continues to smile, gentle and enigmatic and lowers her hand. Inside she feels ecstatic: how easy this has been, a few pretty words and he's practically eating out of the palm of her hand. Her aunts were right about men, such simple creatures, a bit of skin and some compliments and they're lost.

He grins back at her, smug and a little in awe and it's so very flattering. She wants to hold his attention, build on the brief connection they've made before she's forced to find her way back to the harem, maybe use this time to plant some seeds. He has the potential to be great, her prince, all the ambition and cleverness there, he just needs a little guidance. But that will have to come later, she doesn't trust his reaction at the moment were she to offer advice.

"So," she says, lowering her hand, "do you practice every morning?"

"Of course," he replies, as if this should be obvious, "you can't be the best if you don't train," he finishes, matter-of-factly.

She quirks a brow at him, _this she can use,_ "Is that your goal then, Highness?" she enquires, looking up at him, "To become the best?"

He frowns in genuine confusion, his brows drawing a faint line between them as he answers, "Why do anything if not to be the best? Effort is worthless if you are happy to settle for mediocrity, you might as well never try," he snorts derisively and scowls, a serious, forbidding expression, "my abilities as a firebender reflect on the royal family and the nation as a whole," he states, "if I am, Agni forbid, _bad_ at it, I bring shame to everything the nation stands for: it's a question of honour."

Ah, _honour_. Now there's a concept that she understands well, Earth Kingdom aristocracy is obsessed with it. Fortunately, she has lived long enough to understand that honour is not worth the air used to speak of it; ideals of _honour_ and _nobility_ are discarded the moment they become detrimental: she has learnt that the hard way.

But that is a lesson she can teach her prince later, when he is less likely to take offence at it, instead she gives him a sly grin, "Well, from an untrained eye you looked rather brilliant, if I may say," her grin turns sultry, her eyes heavy-lidded and dark, "all that _skill_ and _power_ , it was… _mesmerising._ "

He blushes and averts his eyes, having caught her rather unsubtle attempts at flirting, but a pleased smile toys at the corners of his mouth nonetheless. "That was nothing," he says, both shy and proud, "merely a simple sparring routine, there are much more, uh… _impressive_ sets in my arsenal," he directs back at her with a heated look, trying his level best to return fire.

She smirks internally at his juvenile innuendo, _nice try,_ she thinks, _but I'm pretty sure you don't._ She plays along anyway though. "Really?" she practically purrs, devouring his young, lean body with her eyes, delighting in how charmingly bashful and pleased this makes him, "you'll have to show me sometime."

His lips curve into a full-blown smirk and for a moment any awkwardness is gone, "Indeed, Miss Zarin," he says and he captures one of her hands to bring up to kiss. His golden eyes catch hers over the top and they blaze with that same fire from earlier; her breath catches in her throat and her eyes widen, briefly stunned before she regains her senses. He notices and his self-satisfied grin widens.

 _Well played_ , she thinks grudgingly, _I'll make a charmer of you yet._ For a brief instant she can see him in five, ten years' time: tall and handsome and enthralling, the type of person you just can't help but gravitate to, no matter how terrible they may be. A man in his prime fully aware of the dangerous charisma he holds and able to use it.

The image is a heady one.

But for now he is only just beginning to exercise this power, and in the sporadic fashion of a novice; she looks forward to teaching him how to wield it.

She quirks an eyebrow at him as he lets go of her hand, "Well I hope you live up to expectations then," she replies, recovering from her lapse.

He opens his mouth to retort in what he probably hopes is something witty and charming when the sound of armoured boots coming towards them distracts them both.

She whips her head around in the direction of the sound, realising her time this morning is up and mourns that she'll have to go back to the harem. She curses internally and turns back to face the prince who, by the displeased furrow of his brows, has come to a similar realisation.

The sun is much higher in the sky now, the rays are still cool and weak, as is befitting of winter, but the customary mugginess has begun to creep into the air now and the breeze has all but vanished. She detests the idea of returning to the opulent gloom of the palace after basking in the morning sun, but then again, she detests nearly all things these days.

She shoots the prince an apologetic smile, "Apologies, Your Highness, but I must take my leave now, it's been an… _interesting_ morning," she says.

Ozai looks like he's trying not to sigh in disappointment, but his disgruntled expression says it all, "Of course," he says reluctantly with a nod, "I have duties I must see to as well," he says, almost as if he's trying to convince himself.

 _Should I?_ she thinks, taking one last look at him, _oh why not,_ and she darts up to press a quick kiss to his scowling, puckered mouth, before scurrying back towards the door she came through.

He stands there dumbstruck for a second before calling out, "Wait! Can I see you tonight?" he asks just before she returns to the servants' passages.

She gives him one last sultry look, "You know where to find me," before vanishing back into the dark.


End file.
